A Winter's Tale
by justadram
Summary: The War of Three Dragons comes to the Vale, bringing Jon Snow and Sansa Stark together once more. Jon/Sansa, Jaime/Sansa.
1. Chapter 1

**Title**: A Winter's Tale  
><strong>Author<strong>: just_a_dram  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: ASOIAF  
><strong>Pairing<strong>: Jon/Sansa, Jaime/Sansa  
><strong>Chapter Rating<strong>: T  
><strong>Chapter Word Count<strong>: 2258  
><strong>Summary<strong>: The War of Three Dragons is brought to the Vale, bringing Jon Snow and Sansa Stark together once more.  
><strong>Author's Note<strong>: Part of this chapter was originally a fill for the comment fic meme at **got_exchange**.

Chapter One

The War of Three Dragons is brought to the Vale, and she will not brook opposition to her presence just beyond the fray, although Jaime Lannister makes his displeasure known. _I'd take you, not your bones, back to Winterfell, Lady Sansa_, he said through gritted teeth, but he knows as well as anyone that she will not be turned aside. She wants to be the first to see the man who was once her brother—half-brother, bastard brother, she always insisted. It is said he is the Prince that is Promised, the Warrior of Light, the Son of Fire, who wields Lightbringer to scatter the darkness that stalks the land, and she will see him for herself, see what remains of Jon Snow, her brother, if anything. She means to see if she is truly alone in this world or if there is yet another.

The anticipation churns her stomach as the battle wanes and Jon's forces are triumphant over those representing Aegon. They are always victorious or so she has heard. She is almost desperate to see him, and she strains to scan the field, covered in blood and bodies and gore, looking for some sign of him. She has not seen another Stark since her lord father's head graced a spike in King's Landing, and when she thinks back to her childhood, she can just make out Jon's face, so like her father's even if the name Stark was not his own and never will be.

"Tell him I'm here," she commands one of the men of the Vale, who Jaime demanded stand by in case some danger came her way.

Jaime believes in her abilities, but facing a swarm of enemy knights unprotected in her grey woolen gown he does not count amongst those talents, and it costs her nothing to let the man stand by her. He has even proved useful as a messenger, as he dashes away to find the victorious commander.

Although she desires above all things to see Jon, she will not seek him out, throwing herself in his path. Her place is not on the battlefield, and it has occurred to her that he might not be entirely pleased to see her. He might question her wisdom in placing herself in danger here so close to the bloodshed, as Jaime has done, or he might bear a grudge—she was never the sister she should have been. He might wish in his heart that it was Arya who waits for him, not Sansa. So she resolves to let him choose whether he will see her.

He chooses her.

They say he is Targaryen, but the world goes silent around her as she stands here on the edge of the field, and she knows him for what he is. Solemn, lean, strong, dark haired, and grey eyed, Jon is unquestionably a Stark, more so than herself with her Tully red hair and blue eyes. The crowd parts for him as if he is a sword slicing through water, as he strides towards her, and she no longer feels the bite of winter, throwing back her hood so that she might see him better. He is bloody. Bloody but seemingly unharmed, she thinks, as he comes closer, for there is no catch in his step, no slump to his shoulders.

It takes everything within her not to dash forward. To throw herself into his arms, which she imagines might feel familiar in a way nothing has in so very long. She would like nothing more than to shed the reserve she has cultivated in her years as Alayne Stone, but she only allows herself four measured steps to close the distance between them.

Her heart beat pounds in her ears as she realizes she does not know what to call him, when he goes to one knee and looks up at her through his almost black hair, tangled with blood, and she realizes she is saying his name aloud, as she presses the palms of her gloved hands to his cheeks, and either he's speaking her name too or it just sounds inside her head as if he is. Does she imagine his voice, older, deeper, speaking her name?

"Oh, _Jon_." She grasps his shoulders. "What are you doing? You shouldn't kneel for me. Stand." She laughs to herself, a hiccup of barely contained hysteria, realizing she has just given a command to a man who would claim to be king.

_Her big brother_.

But he complies, and only looks to where one of her hands lies on his shoulder.

"Sansa, I'll bloody you."

She bites her lip, holding back a flood of long checked tears.

"I don't care." But of course he would think she would, the Sansa he knew would have. She shakes off the thought, and attempts to sound cheerful, when she says, "I don't know whether to apologize or welcome you first."

"What can you possibly have to be sorry for?" he asks, as frown lines form between his brows.

"For never saying goodbye." He left for the Wall, and she gave no second thought to the departure of her _bastard_ brother.

"Goodbyes, dear Sansa, are overrated."

I don't ever want to say goodbye, she thinks, as tears threaten to spill over her cheeks, and suddenly his arms are enfolding around her and her earlier vision of their first meeting comes to life.

…

Lady Sansa feeds Jon's men in a banquet that almost recalls the bounty of the land prior to the arrival of winter. She sits at his side, and he finds himself not eating the venison before him, as he tries to think of the courtesies she must expect from him, but which escape him in his exhaustion.

"Jon," she says, and he looks down to see her delicate hand on his arm. "You must be weary."

His eyes lock on her at his name on her lips. She is distractingly beautiful, and he is embarrassed how often his eyes are drawn to her. To her long red hair, unbound over her shoulders. He remembers a pretty little girl, who liked songs and practiced her embroidery with great care, but he had not imagined this great lady. This red headed beauty reminds him of her mother, which turns something in his gut, but she reminds him of someone else as well.

_Kissed by fire_.

"The men are tired," he says, refusing to speak of his own complaints when others have given so much. "It is good to rest tonight."

"I would have you rest here more than the night. We have plenty of provisions put aside, more than enough."

"We couldn't presume," Jon begins, but she interrupts, withdrawing her hand and smoothing out her skirts with a shake of her head.

"Of _course_ you can. Now, how long will you stay with us?"

The intention is to move on, further south, where Aegon's forces hold sway, but it is a tempting offer. He has had nothing but thoughts of feeding his men, fighting alongside them, and surviving another day for so long that he had forgotten such beauty could exist in the world. Or that a woman can be so very distracting. She seems so calmly certain that they must stay that Jon finds himself almost persuaded that war can keep another fortnight. Despite her serene countenance and soft eyes, it might be an offer made only out of the duty she feels towards him as family, and one that might keep her from her own travels.

"I understood that you were planning on leaving the Vale."

Winterfell, it is whispered. He can only hope that he has been misinformed. Winterfell, the whole of the North, is a nightmare from which he has barely awoken himself, and he would sleep less than he already does, should he think Sansa headed there.

"Yes, but I would delay my leaving to be at my brother's side."

He feels his cheeks flush like a youth, and he looks down at the knife in his hand that still has not cut one piece of meat. Her _brother_, and as such, he feels even more compelled to advise her, as her lord father might have wanted him to do, although she is a woman grown and clearly master of herself.

"But, in time, yes," she continues, "Ser Jaime means to lead me home."

The man's name makes Jon's skin crawl. He was none too happy to find him amongst Sansa's men. Of course, she was once a Lannister by marriage, but he did not imagine she wanted any remembrance of that attachment.

"I don't see how you can trust the Kingslayer," he says.

His grip on his knife tightens, as he takes note that the Kingslayer seems as distracted from his supper as he is; his green eyes look out through a hank of blond, ever drawn to Sansa.

"Jaime?" she says, sounding almost amused by his concern. "He pledged himself to my lady mother and he has pledged himself to me as well. He has his own kind of honor, and I trust him to keep his word."

Surely she cannot have forgotten what he and the rest of the Lannisters did to their family, that none of them should be trusted. From what he has seen, however, his sister is not foolish, so there must be something that has tied her to this man.

Only one possibility has occurred to Jon: "He killed Petyr Baelish then?"

He sees the muscles in her jaw tighten, and it is the first time he has sensed something amiss.

"No. Petyr was dead when Jaime found me." She looks down the length of the table at the golden handed man, who reminds Jon of Robb's battles as King of the North and how he was not at Robb's side. "Please don't fight with him," she pleads, while still holding the Kingslayer's gaze.

Jon sighs, as he fails to read what it is these two say wordlessly to each other from across the hall.

"I won't quarrel with him," he promises her, although there would be something satisfying in focusing his anger on one of the people he considers responsible for the destruction of his family. "I need no new fights, but Winterfell is in ruins, Sansa, and the North is not yet safe."

At his words, he sees for the briefest of moments that he is not the only one who is tired: lovely though she is, there is a weariness about her eyes. She seems much too old for the number of name days she has counted. There is much he does not know about her, and he would change that. He would share her burden. He would ask her what she has been through at the hands of Petyr, at the hands of the Lannisters, but he fears her answer, and if she gives it, he might not be able to keep his hands off the Kingslayer. He would rather not begin on a foundation of broken promises.

Her voice is steady when she asks, "You would have me wait?"

He suspects Winterfell has been a dream of hers that gave her hope, when all her other girlish dreams were shattered. He can almost hear her in his head, saying, _home_.

"I would."

He would say more, reason with her, but he inexplicably believes that as much as he can hear her faintly in his mind, she must be able to hear him as well if he only focuses his efforts. What he needs her to know is that he has found her and he would not lose her again.

She sips from her cup, and if she is disappointed by his counsel, she does not display it openly. Perhaps she _has_ heard him. There are other thoughts, less brotherly thoughts, that he would rather shield her from, however, he thinks, as her hair brushes across her back as she leans forward.

"Very well," she says with no hint of resignation, her shoulders squared, as she places the cup on the wide planked table before her. "I would stay by your side then. Would that be an imposition?"

Certainly not an imposition, but that option is not much safer than a removal north. "I'm in the middle of a war," he says with a frown.

Her brows arch, and she reminds him of the proud little girl he left in Winterfell, when she looks down her sloping nose at him and asserts, "I am stronger than I look, Jon."

"I've no doubt of that," he says, scratching at his beard. Life has made her strong or maybe that is her inheritance as a Stark, as much as her lovely red hair is what her mother's family gave to her.

When she embraced him on the field, her hair smelled of lilacs and it was soft under his scarred, callused hands. The memory of it makes him think it would be better if she stayed here in the Vale, where she is safe from more than stray arrows and dragon's fire.

"And perhaps I can make myself useful?"

He indulges for a moment the notion of having her with him. He feels more himself, more human sitting at her side than he has in months, and that alone is a boon. She has reminded him why he fights at all. She has reminded him there are things worth saving. It is selfish, he fears, but he hears himself saying yes.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Rating**: T  
><strong>Chapter Word Count<strong>: 2339  
><strong>Chapter Summary<strong>: Discussions are underway for the future of Jon's campaign with Sansa at his side.  
><strong>Author's Note<strong>: The enthusiastic response to this fic has been very inspiring. Thank you to all my lovely readers!

Chapter Two

Sansa sits alongside Jon, the place he reserved for her. The only thing that separates them is Ghost, who sits beside Jon and allows Sansa to bury her left hand in his thick fur, as gentled to her touch as Lady ever was. It makes the day just bearable. Jon has included her in his council in honor of her position as lady of this place—_the one thing he's done well other than swing a sword_, Jaime declared, when Sansa marveled at his decision, which she feared might prove to be unpopular with his men. She has listened to the men argue for what seems half the hours of the day. They have talked in endless circles, goblets have been refilled half a dozen times, voices have been raised, and she has sat, the silent observer, at her brother's side. Her strength is in listening.

Until he turns to her and says something that she wasn't expecting. "What do _you_ think, Lady Sansa?"

Her place here is honorary, surely, but his unwavering gaze seems to say otherwise, and her heart skips. She doesn't want to embarrass him. She would give good counsel of which he can be proud, even if he must decide against her opinion.

Petyr's advice to her begins to race through her mind. A patter of softly spoken commands against the shell of her ear. _Don't blink. Don't fuss with your hands. Keep your back straight. Look them in the eyes. Courage in the face of a challenge. Use your strengths. You're beautiful when you smile._

She takes a breath, because Petyr always said it is better to take a breath and think before one speaks and commits oneself to something. _Use that mind of yours. Beauty, brains, and birth, my dear, and the world will be ours._

But Petyr is dead.

She is still the heir of Winterfell, however, the role for which Petyr groomed her. _First the Vale, then the North…_

She pinches the skin at her wrist under the table to silence Petyr's voice in her head, as it turns into the hiss of a snake that coils about her neck.

She scans the room. Some of these men were her father's bannermen. Some of these men may have fought alongside Robb. They fight for her brother now. They call him king. She can feel the weight of their stares as heavy as the fresh, wet snow that fell last night.

"I have no wisdom to share about war, Your Grace. I am but a woman." She sees several of the men nod in agreement, and she regrets her words—so much for speaking with care. She would not have these men think her incapable. She has not fought with plate and sword, but she has fought and survived. "But in terms of broader strategy," she says, as her shoulders square, "it seems wise to press forward, to march south, and engage Aegon's forces before they have time to regroup."

Her men, those who represent the Vale, murmur their support, for they already have knelt to her and benefited from her leadership, but not all of the men approve of her—a lady—speaking her mind in a war council. She can see it in their fearsome scowls, which are evident even underneath their thick winter beards.

"Aegon's forces are weak," a man announces, derision dripping in his tone.

"It is the Dragon Queen we should prepare for," another adds.

"Let them limp back to King's Landing. The dragons will finish him off," the first man says rather more loudly than is strictly necessary, but that is the way of most men: they mistake loud words for wise words.

Sansa fights back a smirk at such a clear weakness in one who is old enough to know better. Some people never learn, but Sansa knows Jon is a wise leader, and that gives her strength to continue.

"I would finish off Aegon _before_ the Dragon Queen reaches King's Landing," Sansa says, looking down the length of the table, lined by battle hardened men, who know more about swordplay than she could ever hope to learn even if Jon had given _her_ a sword, instead of their sister. But she knows something about games: she has been a pawn and she has been taught to be a player. "Aegon must know his forces are the weakest of the three and stand to fall first. With dragons at the gates, he will seek an alliance with Daenerys."

"The lady is a soothsayer," a Northern man says with a chuckle that is cut short by Jon's hand coming down hard on the table.

"Careful," Jon says, his voice nearly a growl.

In the space made by the reverberating shock and Jon's command, Sansa speaks again, "I know what it is to be given in a political match, ser. They are as important a part of the game as what takes place on the battlefield, and I suspect that Aegon will propose marriage to unite nephew and aunt, so that they might rule together. Your Grace," she says looking to her brother, "may not care to propose marriage to Aegon, however pretty he might be." At least half of the men laugh at that, and she flashes a smile, her confidence blooming. "So, you can only hope to prevent that alliance by smashing his forces before it comes to fruition."

"There is a problem with your counsel, Lady Sansa: the Dragon Queen will never accept such a proposal. She rejects his claims and calls him a pretender," a craggy faced lord she does not know objects with some attempt at civility.

"Yes, you could wager on that," Sansa says with a tilt of her head, "but she's made worse matches from what I hear. She could use a consort like Aegon. The smallfolk prefer Aegon to her foreign ways and dragons. She might be made to see the wisdom of the match if Aegon lives to make it, and I would rather not wager my brother's throne on a woman's heart."

Sansa thinks she can see a smile in Jon's grey eyes, and although he speaks not a word, she can hear him whisper to her, _Well done_.

…

Sansa dismisses Ser Jaime from her chamber when her serving girl comes to brush her hair out for bed. She watches him go in her mirror, while she wraps her fur lined cape she has draped over her shoulders more tightly around her to fight the cold night air that seeps into her bones. He disappears around the door, as her girl takes the pearl handled brush in hand and brings it to the crown of her hair—red now after nearly a name's day turn since Petyr's death. The same amount of time she has known Jaime Lannister as someone other than the despised Kingslayer.

Her nerves unwind with each pass of the brush through her hair. Jaime has agreed to come with her, or rather, he has insisted upon it. _Let Jon Snow worry about his throne, I'll worry about the heir of Winterfell_. Sansa was nervous to tell Jaime of her plans. With Jon having announced to his council that they will pursue Aegon without delay, she knows that she will be at his side whether Jaime follows or not, but she dreaded his refusal, since she has come to rely on him like she does no one else.

With the blood not yet dry on her hands, Jaime had arrived in the Vale and congratulated her on her act. _You're not a kinslayer, little wolf, he was never your father_. He had informed her of Petyr's crimes against her family, some of which she had suspected and others she had not, and then he had the bravery or foolhardy impetuousness to confess his sins against the Starks as well. When she did not turn the dagger immediately on him, he had renewed his vow, repeating the promise he once made to her lady mother, and she had believed him. This man would see her home, although he had no claim upon the power she might wield should he succeed in that quest. Above all reason she had believed him, because in making plain all his sins, she had seen no reason to doubt his truths.

Sansa likes his plain speaking, and as they had grown comfortable with each other, his vulgar mouth had been what drew the first true laugh from her in many name days. Indeed, he spends as much time drowning his own sorrows as he does lightening hers through his impious comments and crass observations. After so long being in the presence of someone who calculated his every move, Sansa finally feels as if she can breathe easy around Jaime's unguarded tongue.

Sansa likes the way he looks at her. He looks at her not as she is a child, not as something in need of molding and shaping, but as a strong woman. He sees her not as Alayne Stone, not as a pale reflection of her lady mother, but as Sansa Stark, a formidable force. When he had told her what had become of her lady mother—a living death—and Sansa's carefully composed mask had slipped and tears had begun to stream down her cheeks, he hadn't looked away, ashamed or disappointed by her failure to maintain control. He simply had kept looking at her, and she had taken comfort in it as much as if he had held her.

If he left her now, she would not blame him, but she would miss him in a way Jon couldn't understand. She need not agonize about that now, however: he claims that his vow is unfulfilled and he will see her safe, which means traveling with them south.

_I'm glad to hear it_, Sansa confessed.

_Your brother will be thrilled as well, no doubt_.

She can't worry about that. There is a great deal to be accomplished before the troops move. As the lady of this place, there is much for her to do.

Her thoughts turn from planning, when her serving girl, Dasha, titters something that Sansa doesn't catch.

"What was that?"

"Your brother is handsome, my lady."

"That man is your king," Sansa says, for she accepts Jon as such whether he is Targaryen or not, whether he has yet to sit the Iron Throne or not.

"Kings can be handsome," Dasha says with a slow smile, sneaking a glance at Sansa in the mirror.

Sansa sighs. "Yes, of course they can." And Jon _is_ a handsome king. Even with his thick beard and clothes in need of mending, she thinks him the handsomest king she has ever seen. Robb perhaps had been this handsome, but she'll never know for sure. All she has is her imagination, and some things are too painful to conjure up.

"It isn't his handsome face that will save us from burning," Sansa says, as if she is far removed from girlish thoughts, and in some ways she is. Life has turned the wheels of time too quickly.

Dasha doesn't respond, and Sansa looks up to see the girl's stricken face in the mirror, looking off to the side at some threat outside of Sansa's peripheral vision. Sansa twists on her bench to see what has frightened her girl, and she sees Ghost standing in the shadows.

"Ghost, to me," she says, holding out her hand.

As Ghost pads forward as quiet as a specter that his name implies, the quiet of the room is disturbed, when the girl drops the brush with a noisy clatter on the stone that makes the already frightened girl jerk.

"It's all right," Sansa says, as she bends down to stroke Ghost's head. "He won't harm you, you see."

"I'm afraid of wolves, my lady," the girl whispers, sounding as if she is about to cry.

Sansa thinks of saying that her lady is a wolf, but she takes mercy on the girl's nerves and dismisses her.

Alone with her brother's direwolf, Sansa slips to the floor, kneeling alongside the animal, who perhaps should frighten her too. It could take her head inside its powerful jaws and put an end to her troubled life with one snap. But Ghost's quiet strength reminds her of Jon, who might be a dragon, but seems all wolf to her.

"Did you hear me speak of Jon?" she murmurs, as its red eyes hold hers.

Better Ghost hears than Jon. When she catches Jaime gazing at her, he stares boldly, unapologetically back at her, but when she feels Jon's eyes on her and turns to face him, he flushes and quickly finds something else to look upon. He doesn't seem to blame her for her juvenile, false superiority when they were children, although she believes it will always pain her to think on it; so, she doesn't think that is the source of his discomfort. Perhaps he is merely unused to being around women, having been at the Wall for so long, and if that is the case, she would rather he not know how handsome she thinks him, as it might only add to his uneasiness.

Ghost gives no answer to her question, of course, but she feels almost as if he does. She can hear him almost as she hears Jon.

She feels calm in his presence. She feels safe. Her dreams often wake her in the night to a pillow soaked with sweat, bed furs twisted about her legs, but she suspects that having Ghost by her side will bring her comfort, not nightmares.

She stands and lets her cape pool on the floor before crossing the room and crawling atop the high bed, which is draped in velvet.

"Come, Ghost," she calls, as she slides beneath the furs, and in two bounds the direwolf is atop the bed and curling against her side.

She doesn't think Jon will mind sharing for one night.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Rating**: T

**Chapter Word Count**: 2323

**Summary**: On the eve of departure, Jon learns unsettling things.

**Author's Note**: The ranks of Jon/Sansa seem to be growing, and I for one am happy to see it. Hints of jealousy in this chapter for those of us shallow enough to enjoy such things. ;)

Chapter Three

In the three days Jon has spent in the Vale, he has avoided the Kingslayer in his attempt to respect his sister's wishes. It hasn't been easy, because the man never seems far from her side and his smile mocks Jon. Last night he passed Jaime on his way to his chamber. They bumped shoulders—there was more than enough room to avoid being jostled, but neither would give way—in the echoing corridor that led to Sansa's chamber, and the gleam of the man's teeth as Jon had looked up to meet his gaze had almost been enough to make him turn back around and demand Ser Jaime answer for the Lannister's crimes against the Starks.

_Whose chamber do you think I came from_, his grin seemed to taunt.

Jon thought he had managed to conquer the tantalizing pull of satisfying personal desire when he refused Stannis' offer of Winterfell—Sansa's Winterfell—but now that he is here in the Vale, he is stirred to act, to address personal hurts in a way he has not for several name days. It is troubling, and he cannot exactly determine the source of the shift in his feelings. What it is that has made his blood run hot.

Or maybe he can.

As Sansa sweeps into the hall, her grey skirts billowing behind her, Jon hunches his shoulders over his honey sweetened porridge and focuses intently on bringing the spoon to his mouth. Shoveling his food is the sort of lapse in courtesy he tries to avoid around his sister, but eating gives him a purpose, so he devotes himself to it with determination, though he peers over his nose to follow her movements through the hall.

Ghost follows at her side, a silent step behind, looking every bit as if he belongs there. He hasn't seen Ghost since last night, when they supped in the hall together to the accompaniment of song that brought a smile to his sister's fair face. It doesn't surprise him to see Ghost at her heels. Last night his dreams were not of the fields around the Gates if the Moon, of stalking and killing, but of Sansa—stretched out warm alongside him, her pale legs tangled with his, her slender fingers splayed in the hair of his chest. He dreamt wolf dreams, but Ghost must have foregone hunting to stay by his sister's side, and Jon awoke with the soft tendrils of dawn creeping across the fresh rushes of his chamber and couldn't get to the water basin quickly enough to splash himself with its cold contents.

Someone slides into the empty chair beside him, sparing him from the prospect of Sansa find a seat there. Normally he would welcome her, but he needs time to clear his mind of the night's visions before he addresses her today.

"How long will it take her to gather her household?" the newcomer asks without preamble.

Jon casts his gaze sidelong over his cooling porridge. "Asha," he says by way of greeting.

She tosses her short black hair and seems impatient that he hasn't yet answered her. Asha is eager to move on Aegon's forces. Her impatience makes her even less tractable than usual—something Jon thought impossible.

"You might remember that Lady Sansa pressed for your side—pursuing Aegon. So, you could at least refer to her by name." That is the only way Jon can think of encouraging Asha to be more respectful of his sister, although he has little hope that it will make a difference. Asha respects what he has done in the North, she counts herself amongst his men, but she also calls him _Snow_: she is not a woman that bends easily.

"You mean to fight me over a woman's title?" Asha scoffs.

Jon shovels in the last bite of porridge, ignoring her taunt.

Asha rests her elbows on the table and jerks her head towards Sansa, who is greeting some of the morning's early risers. "I just don't want to lose our advantage over Aegon to the gathering up of gowns and serving girls. A great _lady_ like that doesn't travel lightly."

Jon sighs and pushes his empty bowl away from him over the hewn table. "I understand your concern, but Lady Sansa is nearly prepared to leave. She planned to depart long before we ever brought war to the Vale, and she has offered to assist with our preparations. Would you turn down the supplies she means to give to us?"

Asha shakes her head. "She should be generous with her grain store, when she's been so selfish as to demand to come with you. Her presence will slow us down regardless of whether she is prepared to leave or not."

"I _asked_ her to come," Jon lies, in an attempt to put an end to the conversation.

Asha narrows her eyes at him, sizing him up. "Then it was selfish of you, _Snow_."

Jon exhales sharply before reaching for his share of the morning's bitter ale. "You think women should stay away from the field of battle, do you?"

"Well, if she means to don armor, I'll gladly put aside my qualms."

Asha smiles, and though the planes of her face are overly sharp from an extended bout of hunger that a few days in this castle has not erased, he can see why there are men who think her beautiful, why she finds men to share her tent. Her fierceness is not so different from that of the wildlings, and Jon knows how the beauty of a wildling woman can appeal. Her words are not without their wisdom either, and perhaps he should think again of the cost of allowing Sansa to come with them. With every life he ends with his sword, however, he feels less himself, as if he himself is becoming too sharp, too fierce, too much a sword and not enough a man. His sister is a respite, he thinks, looking up to see Sansa moving towards them, and even if his pulse quickens at the sight of her in a way that discomfits him, at least he knows who he is when she is nearby. And that just might keep him from becoming a monster.

…

Sansa led him away from the hall, her hand resting on his arm—a touch that given its lightness was inequitably distracting—to guide him away from the rest of the household. There was no one need for her to sit, although he had suggested it, for she already had broken her fast alone in her chamber. She was eager instead to personally show him the supplies she intends on contributing to their baggage train.

He stands by her side amongst the assembled barrels that wait to be loaded on their carts and wagons later today. They might have more barrels than they can carry.

"This is…" he begins, stunned by the largesse.

"The Eyrie may not be as large as Winterfell, but its granary is substantial and well stocked," she says, as she replaces the lid on the barrel of dried broad beans. "And some of the men are so thin," she says with a little frown.

"Sansa," he begins, but words fail him as he stands there before her. There are no words of gratitude meaningful enough for this wealth before him, which will feed his army for moons to come.

She reaches out and strokes his upper arm—her hand impossibly white against the black of his overcoat. He covers her hand with his own. It feels rough in comparison to hers, but his touch will have to convey the depth of his feelings.

"What's yours is mine," she says simply, as if this is the way of things, as if nothing has or ever will divide them.

He doesn't know what to say to that. He can only hope that she doesn't take his continued silence for stupidity. But her countenance betrays nothing but careful thought. Her evaluative gaze makes him curl his fingers more tightly around hers.

"Father would be so proud of you, Jon."

Ned Stark: the man he will forever consider his lord father, no matter whose seed he is.

Sansa squeezes his arm before he lets her withdraw her hand from him, though he would keep it laced with his.

"Do you believe what they say? That you're a dragon, a Targaryen?" she asks, pronouncing the name as if she is trying its taste on her tongue.

Jon shifts on his feet. "I don't know." He can't help but wonder whether she would rather he was her cousin and not her bastard brother, but of course that is a desire of his that has nothing to do with her line of questioning.

"A man of prophecy," she says, biting her full lower lip. "It's odd to think it."

"I don't know that I believe in prophecies."

"Well, I don't know whether I believe any of it: you look a Stark, after all," she says, the corner of her mouth quirking. Her eyes have settled on his hair, and he self-consciously runs a hand through it—she might think it too long, he thinks—as she continues, "What proof do they have?"

"Only the word of men." He has wondered himself whether this is all nonsense created by those who would rather someone other than Daenerys sit the throne. Of course, Aegon is a fair option for those who merely fear dragons, and yet, when Jon was reborn, men fell at his feet, all too eager to pledge themselves to the bastard Targaryen, who would save them all from darkness.

The pressure of that faith weighs heavy on his shoulders.

"Not just words, but your sword," she says, nodding towards his sword hand, "and a host of men who believe in you."

She is kind, gentle, generous, and brave enough to go off to war with him—everything that a lady should be, the sort of woman Jon has never allowed himself, a bastard and a man of the Night Watch, to dream of as a partner in life. That is why, although he knows his men have faith in him, that they have died and will die for him, what he desires more than anything is her support. If he is worthy of Sansa, prophecies and parentage will mean less, for then he might actually be worthy of the throne they claim should be his.

"Jon," she says, interrupting his thoughts. He sees that a little crease has formed between her brows and her rosy lips have become a thin line. "I should have told you when you came here." She stares down at her hands clasped before her, and suddenly she looks like the little girl he last saw in Winterfell. Her eyes remain downcast, when she whispers the confession he never saw coming, "I killed him myself."

She doesn't say the name, but Jon hears it in his mind. _Petyr_. Bile rises in his throat, as he begins for the first time to truly sense what may have happened to her here under Littlefinger's protection for her to raise a hand against anyone.

"Poison is a woman's trade. He taught me to be proficient with poison, which is why I slit his throat. I paid him the honor he didn't allow my cousin Robert or Harrold—to die like a man." She laughs, but there is no joy in it. "He made me call him _father_, and I almost forgot it wasn't so."

These are horrible words with unthinkable import, but the assault in his mind is even worse: he sees in his mind a man's hands against his sister's skin and he hears hissed whispers too close to her ear. Jon clenches his fists at his side as hard as he clenches his teeth.

"I am not as good as you think, you see. I hid the dagger in my sleeve," she says, her voice faltering for the first time, as she grasps the edge of her fur lined sleeve, demonstrating where she stowed the weapon. "It was dishonorable. Mother would have never…"

"Lady Stark would have plunged the dagger in herself, Sansa," he insists, cutting her off and stepping close enough to her that he need only lift his hand to brush her skirts. She is tall and he barely needs to bend his head to look her in the eyes as he tells her, "As would I."

Littlefinger touched her when she had no option but to allow it. He used her as a pawn in his game. He planned a marriage for her to a man he intended to kill. Jon knows all of this, as if she speaks the details aloud to him.

"There's no body to exhume so that you might stab it with your sword, I'm afraid. Ser Jaime had the body burnt. I choked for two days, thinking I might have breathed his ashes in and would never be free of him."

She sounds hollow and detached, as her hand floats to her throat and wraps around its narrow width. Her blank tone haunts him in a way rage or misery could not, and he wants to draw her back to him, to the present, where Littlefinger can't use her, where she will never be a pawn again. Jon silently promises himself that he will never be the sort of man, the sort of king, who makes pawns of his sisters and daughters.

"Sansa," he says, his hand brushing her side, his palm settling into the small of her waist. "We'll leave this place, and you needn't ever look back."

She will be the Lady of Winterfell, and it will be within her rights to marry or not as she chooses.

"It's no place for a Stark," she agrees with a small nod. "Not even a weirwood can grow here."


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Rating**: T  
><strong>Chapter Word Count<strong>: 2460  
><strong>Chapter Summary<strong>: They reach the end of their first day on the road.  
><strong>Author's Note<strong>: What does Jaime make of all this, you ask? Time for a Jaime POV! Hope you all enjoy it.

Chapter Four

It is the end of their first day's march, and Jaime has just the thing for what is no doubt ailing Lady Sansa. He strides towards her, where she sits before her sizable tent, striped in the colors of House Aryn as opposed to her own house colors, her hands stretched out before the fire that has not yet had a chance to properly flare. Nevertheless, the burgeoning flames reflect in her fiery hair, which drapes unbound over her shoulders. There's something wild and northern about her here with more than a foot of snow beneath their feet and a ruff of white fur high around her ears, and as he stops before her, he thinks she's never looked so beautiful or quite so miserable.

It isn't the cold that knits her brow in discomfort. No, Jaime knows Lady Sansa well enough to understand that she is almost certainly no more bothered by the chill that makes their breath hang before them in the night air than her bastard brother seems to be. These Starks take comfort in the cold. Perhaps even grow stronger in it.

"Here," he says, extending his half empty wineskin. She looks dubiously up at him, and he gives the wineskin a little shake. "It'll help with the pain."

The cold might not trouble her, but Lady Sansa is no more a horsewoman than his sister is, and after a hard day's ride, he knows her soft rump must be smarting. Even Jaime feels the exertion of the day's ride more so than he would have five years ago, and there will be no respite with another long ride ahead of them tomorrow. Sansa can't count on a feathered state bed to rest her head upon for several days at least. She wouldn't think of complaining, however, whereas Cersei would be making her discomfort known in a most disagreeable fashion. Sansa might not voice her pain, but that doesn't mean she doesn't deserve to have that pain soothed. He would rather see her smile than frown. After all, it took several moons for her to smile after he found her in the Vale, and he in no small degree proud that it was his jape that finally dimpled her rosy cheeks.

"Please sit," she says, as she finally takes the wineskin from his hand and nods towards the empty campstool at her side.

If they were still in the castle at the Gates of the Moon, Jon Snow would be occupying this spot, for as soon as he arrived, he established himself at her side—hanging about her skirts like a lapdog as much as the wolf sigil he has never been able to claim. Now that they are on the march, however, he suspects this upstart king will find other things more pressing than his fair sister. If not, his men will become restless with their chosen leader.

She tips back the wineskin with great care. No wine spills over her chin, and she doesn't flinch, though he knows the wine is unpleasantly sour. She brings the wineskin away from her mouth and rests it in her lap, as she licks a stray drop of dark red wine that stands out against her lips—made pale by the cold.

"Thank you, ser."

"If you need to rest tomorrow, pull alongside me and I'll rein in my horse," he says, taking in the bluish shadows beneath her impossibly clear eyes. "We can afford to stop from time to time."

"I can keep up," she says, fingering the cracked leather of the wineskin.

He has no doubt she will do everything within her power to maintain the pace set by the men, but Jaime frowns at the cost. He would have never attempted to stop Sansa from following her brother—it would have been wasted words, he knows—but her exhaustion is only one aspect of the situation that makes him uneasy.

"My tent is much too far from yours," he says bluntly.

She looks up from her rough woolen skirts, her eyes twinkling mischievously at his words, and he smirks back at her.

"Don't look at me like that, you minx," he says, snatching the wineskin out of her grasp in order to take a long draw. "You're a child," he lies with a grimace after the sour wine slips down his throat.

As the moons have waxed and waned, he has not become inured to the appeal of her womanly charms. If anything they have more of an effect on him than before, as she has raised herself in his estimation, demonstrating strength _and_ gentleness, which makes her a formidable example of femininity. It is more than penance that knits him to her side, more than a vain hope of honor. It is a novelty that remakes the world, when she smiles upon him.

"Very well, ser. Why does the distance disturb you?"

"I'm concerned about your safety," he says with another swallow. "Men on the march aren't known for their courtly manners."

"You mean to be my leonine guard then?" she asks, reaching out for the wineskin once more, and Jaime smiles at the intimacy of sharing like this.

It certainly isn't an elevated way of imbibing even if she does tip it back as if it is the finest of goblets at her pretty mouth. Sansa has a way of making everything she does seem ladylike. It makes him push boundaries, so as to test whether he can lure her into yet another common endeavor and then watch her navigate it with grace.

"As best I can," he says, lifting his golden hand.

She huffs at that. "Against all these _dreadful_ soldiers. You're a soldier, are you not?"

Her tone is playful, and he wonders whether the wine could have possibly already gone to her head. He moves to take it back, but she holds it out of reach, one brow raised in triumph.

He corrects her, "I _was_ a soldier."

"I won't share my fire with self-pity," she says coolly, though she softens her reproach with a light touch of her hand on his knee. "There's no room," she says, her mouth quirking in a soft smile. "No, I've seen you in the training yard, ser. I'm sure you could quite neatly dispatch whatever fool who might take it into his head to bother the king's sister if that was the case." Her hand is gone before he can catch it in his own and press her ungloved fingers to his lips for that little kindness. "But Jon isn't far," she says, nodding towards the other spacious tent that is set up alongside hers. "And Ghost will be with me at night. He'd rip the throat out of anyone who dared lift the flap of my tent."

"Thank you for alerting me to that fact," Jaime says with a chuckle. "I'll be sure not to bother the king's sister at night either then."

Sansa tips the wineskin and smiles against its mouth.

"A true knight like you?" she teases. "Besides," she says, rocking on her camp stool until they bump shoulders, "you were never going to attempt something as scandalous as that. I'm just a child."

Jaime takes her in slowly, lingering on her curves more than anyone could possibly deem proper. "For someone with a sore hide, you're in an awfully chipper mood."

She only bothers to look insulted by the mention of her arse for a moment, before shrugging. "I'm out of the Eyrie. It feels as if I've left at least one specter behind."

Jaime thinks it is a little optimistic for her to believe that a ghost could be outrun by one day's ride. His have certainly been more tenacious than that.

…

Though Jon's squire has seen to his steed, Jon seeks time alone away from the tents and the clamor of men, and seeing to the condition of his horse's hooves after a cold, wet ride, are as good an excuse as any to disappear for a space. As Jon moves amongst the horses in the encroaching darkness, he spots the Kingslayer, who apparently has sought a similar kind of solace. He realizes that he cannot avoid this meeting, for the man has seen him as well, and he will not be the one to turn and leave, when he claims to be king. This army moves at his order and he is no child.

Ghost pads at his side through the snow, the fur on his back bristling, as they approach the man, who leans into his hip, watching their approach with perfect indifference as if the direwolf inspires in him no fear. Foolishly cocksure, Jon thinks, or a practiced liar. Jon waits until they are almost on top of him before speaking Ghost's name, so as to stop his lip from curling over his teeth.

Jon notices in the crisp night air that the man smells of wine.

"The last time I saw you, you were headed for the Wall, to protect our fair kingdom. How did that turn out for you?" the Kingslayer asks, tilting his head.

"Well, the Others aren't at your door yet."

"_Yet_. That's rather optimistic. So, well enough then, I suppose," he says, reaching up with his one remaining hand to stroke his white mount's forelock. "You still dress as if you're a member of the Night's Watch, although I take it we're not riding to King's Landing to fetch more of the kingdom's finest from the dungeons to serve as recruits."

Jon doesn't like the man's tone. They are still fighting to hold back the Others and wights at the Wall. He means to win this war and send as much help—in the form of hands, dragonglass, and dragonsteel—there as he can. He'd happily make Jaime a guard on that Wall. Watch that grin freeze right on his face.

"You mean my sister didn't tell you our plans?" Jon says a little triumphantly.

"Is it 'our' now?" Jaime asks with a smirk. "You mean to win the throne for the Lady Sansa?" he plainly mocks. "How thoughtful, although I must inform you that for all her skill at the game, she hates it. All she wants is to be free of the memories of this place and go home."

"I'm aware of that."

"Good. You _should_ know that she changed all her plans to suit you," Jaime spits back, suddenly all pretense of humor drained from his face.

Jon has no desire to be lectured by this man. "You needn't concern yourself with Lady Sansa anymore, and I certainly have no need of you. You can be on your way, ser. At any time."

"Trust me, I have no intention of raising a sword for any king's cause with Tommen already dead, but I _will_ use it on Lady Sansa's behalf. I vowed to her mother to see her safely home, and that's a vow I intend on keeping."

"It would be the first," Jon says, and a muscle jumps in Jaime's cheek. He's hit a nerve it would seem.

"You've never broken a vow, honorable Jon Snow?"

Of course he has. Many times. The fact that he is here, leading this army is proof enough of that, when he vowed to stay at the Wall, to put aside ambition and familial ties.

Jon ignores his jab, however, when he says, "I can see her safely home. I am her brother."

"You left the Night's Watch, I left the King's Guard, but I'm the only one out of a job. I'd say you're rather busier than I am at the moment. It might be some time before you could see to your sister's establishment at Winterfell."

"And you imagine I could trust to your honorable intentions alone on the road with her?" Jon already fears that in Sansa's grief Jaime Lannister insinuated himself into her life, her chamber, her bed, but he would never ask her such a thing, nor would he give the Kingslayer the satisfaction of asking it of him.

"Honor, no," Jaime says with a shake of his head that is echoed by the stamp of his steed's hoof against the frozen ground. "I have no claim to that, but I find it rather difficult to trust to yours either. Convincing your sweet sister to come with you on campaign was rather telling," Jaime says, arching a brow.

Jon finds it interesting that Asha assumed Sansa had demanded it, while the Kingslayer presumes just the opposite, but in this case he has no intention of arguing the point. He merely crosses his arms over his chest and stares back at the man even though Jaime adds, "Setting your tent alongside hers is just embarrassing."

Jon can picture his hands around the man's throat and pressing until the light in his eyes goes out. He's drunk and missing a hand. Jon doesn't doubt he could do it.

"But given the circumstances, you're in luck: it's so easy for you Targaryens, since the rules don't apply to you." Jon frowns at the drunken nonsense the Kingslayer spouts, and Jaime looks at him as if he is exceedingly stupid before continuing, "No one will speak a word when you seek to raise your sister up as your queen."

Jon's eyes narrow at the implication and he takes half a stride towards the man. Sansa asked him to let Jaime be, but this is a step too far.

"She is my _sister_," he says through a tightly clenched jaw.

Jaime sighs. "Yes, that's just as I said. You certainly wouldn't be the quickest king Westeros has ever seen sit the Iron Throne."

Ghost bares his teeth and snaps nearly soundlessly, and Jon kneels down to bury his hand in the scruff of his neck, so he doesn't bury his fist squarely in Jaime's face. It would be satisfying to watch Ghost rip his throat out, but Jon fears Sansa's reaction. He fears her tears and what they might mean as much as he fears her wrath. He suspects as much as he knows that she has experienced a great deal of pain, and he would not add to it. Even if it would mean ridding himself of Jaime Lannister.

"But then, if you're truly a Targaryen, as they say, she isn't really your sister, is she? It's all _very_ convenient." Jaime pauses, stepping around Jon and Ghost to walk back into the darkness. "I'm sorry to tell you though, that I won't be leaving her side until I've completed my vow. She was _my_ sister too, you know," he says, looking down at Jon with a smirk. "So, we best get used to each other's faces."


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Rating**: T  
><strong>Chapter Word Count<strong>: 2814  
><strong>Chapter Summary<strong>: Sansa's stitches are neat and even.  
><strong>Author's Note<strong>: I just couldn't help but torture Jon a bit here, because his brooding face is so cute. ;) You ladies were right though, Jaime's words have had an effect.

Chapter Five

Having given chase, pressing hard over frozen ground for four days, his newly better fed army caught Aegon's forces unaware and battle ensued. Jon paid for the battle with a wound to his thigh. Though he can feel the beat of his pulse in his thigh like a hammer, it's a small cost, when he considers the men who paid with their lives.

But Jon can't think about that now. He has thrown all his council, who were eager to make their suggestions—demands, Jon thinks with a scowl—out of his tent on the advice of his sister, who pointed out with cool derision that while they argued, their king bled. He watched with some amusement as all but his squire and Sansa filed out, cowed by her icy glare. His sister looks soft to the touch, but she can be hard like Valyrian steel, when a woman's gentle touch simply is not enough.

She has stayed, because she insists that she will tend him herself. The prospect makes Jon's heart pump fast anew, as if he is wielding his longsword on the field once more, and the vigor of his heartbeat causes blood to seep at an alarming pace into his soiled, torn breeches. Surely it is unseemly for her to see him without his breeches, but the wound is high on his thigh, and there will be no way for it to be cleaned and wrapped without taking them off. His brows knit together as he stares at her, considering how he might dissuade her, while she gathers supplies.

Jon clears his throat. "Sister, let me send my squire for the maester."

"Maester Mullin?" she tosses over her shoulder. "I've seen his work, Your Grace. He's a butcher."

"A fighter," Jon corrects her, but she is right. Until Sam finishes with his training, he is hobbled with a maester barely fit for that title.

Sansa turns to his squire, who is standing by, ready to be directed, shifting awkwardly on his feet, and addresses him, "I need wine to cauterize the wound. Have some heated as hot as you can get it and bring it back to me."

The lad is only too quick to heed her request, no doubt as charmed by her as half of his men seem to be, and they are left alone.

Apparently that is the end of the debate, because she turns her back, and instructs him to remove his breeches. He would have more to say about it, but he suspects he will only end up capitulating eventually. Better to spare himself the effort and surrender to her now. So, Jon sinks onto the camp bed with a hiss, pulls off his boots, and begins to work at the laces on his breeches, his hands fumbling awkwardly either from blood loss or her presence here with him while he disrobes. Finally struggling free of them, he tosses the mangled, bloody breeches onto the ground with a heavy sigh.

"Ready?" she asks brightly.

She barely waits for his grumbled reply before turning towards him with a basin of water in her hands and strips of linen draped over her arm to bind his wound once her task is finished.

"I don't like this part," he says, staring down at his wound, so that he doesn't have to meet her face, as his sister kneels at his feet, placing the basin of water beside her.

"Why must men be such terrible patients?" she asks, while she dips a clean cloth in the water.

It must be lightheadedness that makes the words tumble forth unbidden, "What do you know of men?"

She looks up at him through her lashes before wringing out the cloth over the wound to flush it out.

"I know enough," she responds at last, having repeated the wringing out twice in palpable silence.

She begins to inspect the wound for debris, prodding with more tenderness than Jon has come to expect from maesters, although the pain still twists his gut. His fingers dig into the mattress tick, and he's thankful for the sharp stab of pain, as her fingers spread the wound, because it distracts him from imagining what she might have meant by her response or what he intended asking her such a thing. During the short hours that make up a day now that winter bears down upon them, Jon has been busy enough leading an army to keep his mind free of troubling thoughts, but since his encounter with the Kingslayer, at night he has laid awake, consumed by thoughts of his sister.

Sansa _should_ be queen. Or perhaps, she already _is_ a queen. More so than he will ever be a king, and yet he has it potentially within his power to make Westeros acknowledge what is already true. Should he win, should she want…

But she wouldn't, and she would be right to say no, because it is wrong, surely. Not only because she was raised as his sister, but because he is a bastard—a bastard by a different father, perhaps, but a bastard still—and he is a crow. Though he has accepted the men's shouts of _king_ and he can see how that will require him to take a wife, he finds it difficult to imagine any wife, let alone presume to lift his thoughts to Sansa.

And yet, that is a lie: he thinks of her every night. The thought of losing her has become more terrifying than the threat of losing this war, of winter coming to bury them all, of icy blue eyes that stare out of the eyes of dead men, women, and children, and he twists in his bed at night, fighting the desire that seems kindled by the Kingslayers words. When he does sleep, she's there beside him in his dreams, warm and real.

Jon is saved from his thoughts when the squire hurries back into the tent, carrying a black iron pot that steams with what Jon can only assume is the wine Sansa requested only minutes earlier.

"Right there, please," Sansa says, nodding to the floor, and his squire places it carefully at her side, so that nothing sloshes over the side, no wine splatters her simple, blue skirts. "You were quick about your task," she says, smiling up at the boy, as he straightens up.

Honest to a fault, the boy doesn't take credit for a job well done, when he admits with slouched shoulders, "Maester Mullin already had some over the fire."

"He's good for something then," Sansa whispers conspiratorially, while she leans into Jon's uninjured leg.

Jon fixes his gaze on his squire, ignoring his sister's teasing voice and the pressure of her shoulder against the inside of his thigh. "You're dismissed," Jon says with a wave of his hand, and the squire scrambles from the tent, leaving them alone once more.

"He seems a good boy," she observes, still pressed for a moment against his leg before straightening back up.

"He was a Wildling."

"It was wise of you to make allies out of the Wildlings," she says, beaming up at him, and though Jon already knows he did the right thing there, he feels his chest tighten at her pride in him and his cheeks begin to flush.

If she senses his embarrassment, she does not draw attention to it, instead turning back to her task, as she drags the heavy pot into her lap.

"Shall I pour it or would you?" Sansa asks. Jon stares down into the hot contents. "I better," she concludes before allowing him the chance to pretend as if his grip hasn't been loosened by blood loss. "But we can call for something to dull the pain first."

Jon would rather delay no longer, and there is a wineskin within reach of his camp bed, so he leans over and makes use of whatever dulling properties the wine might possess. He takes several swallows at once, and Sansa waits, holding the wine at the ready.

It burns about as badly as Jon imagined it would, and he leans back onto his left hand, feeling a surge of something rush through his body, making his toes tingle and his fingers feel numb. It is the same rush he feels on the battlefield. It is very similar to the rush he once felt in the arms of…

"I'll need to stitch it," she says, and his head sways to the side until he can see her.

He hadn't realized his head was getting heavy until she spoke, and he furrows his brows, concerned that he might be on the verge of passing out. Consciousness is a priority, and yet, the pain is still there before his eyes, pounding in rhythm with his heart, so he takes another long draw from the wineskin and watches her as she digs in her lap for the needle, which she has already threaded. Jon would suddenly like nothing better than for this torture to be ended, as he fights the urge to be pulled down into darkness.

"Just wrap it up," he says, and the words sound somewhat slurred.

She shakes her head, and she reminds him in that moment of her mother. The way Catelyn Stark could correct her children with just a small change in the shape of her mouth. Of course, she never saw to his cuts and scrapes, the way she sometimes did Robb's, nor did she ever look upon him with anything like the fondness he sees in Sansa's eyes.

But she had red hair, just not quite this fine. Red like fire, he thinks, and he reaches out a hand and places it atop her crown of flames. It doesn't burn him, but then, they say the Targaryens cannot burn. That might be a lucky thing, he thinks blearily.

He swallows thickly, and casts his eyes onto the floor of the tent, somewhere to the left of his sister, as he draws back his hand.

"I'm good with a needle and thread," she assures him. "Fine, even stitches. Septas are better at teaching that sort of thing than the instructors at the Citadel, I've no doubt."

That much Jon remembers about his little sister, but he never thought to see her skills employed in such a manner. He would spare her the sight of blood or the smell of it, which Jon realizes with a flip of his stomach, pervades even the inside of this tent, but his sister seems unshaken. Any expectations he had about Sansa have been proven wrong in little more than a week.

"May I have some?" she asks, and he is already so dumb from the pain and the wine that pools in his empty stomach that he stares at her, not quite understanding her request. "The wine, Jon?" she repeats.

Understanding at last, he moves to wipe the mouth of it off with his sleeve, but his sleeve is just as dirty from the battlefield as the rest of him. She deserves something so much better than all this filth and blood—a living horror he has sunk her into.

"That's all right," she says, taking it from his hand. "Thank you," she adds, before taking a swallow. She hands it back to him with a slow smile. "It will keep my hand from shaking," she explains, holding up the needle.

"I thought you said you were good at this," Jon says, as she works to tie a knot and bites off the trailing end of the thread.

"Well, I've never tried before to be honest, but confidence is a shield against suspicion."

Maybe it's just her tone that makes her meaning clear, but Jon feels as if that man's name is reverberating inside his head—_Petyr_—and he knows without asking that Petyr taught her this lesson in gamesmanship.

Jon winces, shifting his weight further onto his one arm, and asks, "Did he teach you to trick people like this?"

He meant to tease, but he can see from the glazed look in her eyes that the answer is yes.

"Do you mind? I don't want that maester of yours touching you. He's filthy. Truly," she whispers.

How can he fight her concern for him? Real, heartfelt concern that springs from ties Jon had thought severed. "No, I don't mind."

He surrenders to her ministrations, and he can feel the bite of the needle as he tips the wineskin against his lips and looks to the ceiling of the tent, sloping upward above him. She works efficiently, and she speaks to him, her voice soothing, her words kind, a pleasant distraction from the tug of the thread knitting his torn flesh back together.

"The men say you fought well."

"Not well enough apparently," he says, still staring up at the heavy red canvas of the tent.

"What is one more scar? They only make us stronger."

Jon isn't sure if she refers to the scars he has that are plain to all—the burn on his palm and the lines on his face, which although no longer angry and red, must not escape her notice—or whether she speaks of symbolic hurts. Jon knows she has the latter in abundance. If he ever finds evidence of the first kind on her…

"They say you always fight well. I remember watching you in the training yard. Jeyne and I would watch from the window while you boys practiced with wooden swords. You were a fine swordsman even then."

Jon laughs silently, more a convulsion of his throat than a real expression of mirth. It's a reminder from her own lips that she should be the furthest thing from his mind. If the Kingslayer thought the proximity of their tents a damning piece of evidence, he hates to think what filthy conclusions he would draw from this scenario with Sansa on the floor before him, his breeches strewn half way across the tent, and his own sluggish thoughts betraying him.

"Who would have guessed that you were training to be kings?"

She pauses, mumbles something to herself, and pronounces her stitching finished.

Jon finally ventures a look down at his leg, while she unrolls the strips of linen, as he drains the last of the wine. Her stitches are fine and even, just as she promised. Even though the skin is angry, it doesn't seem as gruesome as it did minutes earlier.

"Robb died for a throne," she observes blankly, as she places the first strip over his thigh, her fingers just brushing the hard muscle. "Is it worth it?" she asks, as she pulls another strip more tightly over the first.

"I'd rather not be king at all," he confesses—something he hasn't dared say aloud since the day he was proclaimed.

"And I suppose that's why you must be king," she says with a soft sigh. "Even if I'd rather we left tonight for Winterfell. It could be ours, you know, and we'd be safe tucked away from the rest of the world," she says, as she finishes binding his leg and looks up at him with eyes that swim with unshed tears.

_My sister_.

"Jon? Are you all right?" she asks, as she moves from the ground to the bed, the mattress tick shifting beneath him as she sits close enough that her skirts spill over his uninjured leg. Her hand rests on his arm, as she says, "Jon, you look pale."

He turns into her, leaning painfully on the leg that protests each exertion, however small, and her hand grips his bicep tighter. She probably means to steady herself—or him, more likely—but he's confused and her grip promises something else to his feverish, overtired mind, so that he finds himself pressing his cheek against hers. She's smooth and soft and a little cool against the rough of his beard and the scalding heat of his flesh.

In the stink of the tent, she smells sweetly feminine despite days of riding and camp living. Lavender water, his foggy mind registers, while she stirs against him for some unknown purpose until he feels her fingers card slowly through his dirty curls. She murmurs something to him, as he rubs his nose over the high curve of her cheek. The words escape him, but he thinks he catches her meaning: she is worried he is going to pass out, when really what he wants to do is taste her mouth. See if she tastes as sweet as she smells. But perhaps she is right to worry, because he vaguely realizes that he is leaning more heavily on her than he intended and even if he should want to sit back up, he cannot.

He hears her silently scream his name just as the world goes as black as night.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Rating**: T  
><strong>Chapter Word Count<strong>: 2471  
><strong>Chapter Summary<strong>: One moment he was embracing her, smelling of sweat and blood and something earthy, which would have been unpleasant except that it was Jon, alive and entangled in her arms, and the next he seemed senseless to her touch, senseless to her worried whispers.  
><strong>Author's Note<strong>: The demand for Sansa's POV has been met, and *fingers crossed* hopefully sufficiently for now!

Chapter Six

One moment he was embracing her, smelling of sweat and blood and something earthy, which would have been unpleasant except that it was Jon, alive and entangled in her arms, and the next he seemed senseless to her touch, senseless to her worried whispers. Now his weight is heavy upon her, heavy and almost lifeless except for rasp of his breath against her neck. With his chest pressed against hers, his head slumped on her narrow shoulder, he is totally unresponsive though she squeezes his muscular arm and speaks—no, screams—his name within her heart as loudly as she can, so that the thump of it and his name—_Jon_—beat in wild tandem. She feels the panic spreading along her body, burning fast and fierce like the green flames of wildfire, and her mind darts from his body—heavy enough that she is being slowly forced backward into the bed—to Petyr, who never felt this solid against her even in death, and as she slips, as her fingers grapple at the smooth, boiled leather that covers his chest and back, she is desperate to prevent him from falling, from tearing open the wound she has just stitched closed.

This was a mistake. An awful, dreadful mistake to selfishly take his life into her own hands, so that she might be of use to him here even in the field of battle, so she might show him how very much she cares. She has not prayed in so many moons that she thought she had forgotten how, but she sends up a shout to the gods—old and new and those she has never been taught to worship—that one among them forgive her terrible arrogance and that Jon not be punished for it.

There is no answer to her pleas. Instead, there is a silence in this tent, a silence that feels as final as a cold tomb. That thought alone makes terror creep up her spine. She cannot lose him. She cannot.

_No_.

A cry tears loose from her throat, and once it has broken free, she finds herself yelling again and again. Pure, animal screams of terror and pain rattle her chest, as she struggles against the hardness of his body that is relentless in pushing her down, further and further until he is nearly atop her.

The rustle of the heavy tent flap silences her screams like a snuffer to a candle flame, and she wrenches her neck as she cranes her head to see who has heard her desperate cries. Jon's sweet, young squire, perhaps. Or Asha Greyjoy, who may scowl at her every time she strides by in her breeches and longsword boldly at her side, but who reminds her of Ayra, what Arya might have become if she hadn't disappeared in the chaos of their lord father's arrest and execution.

But it is neither of them. It's Ser Jaime, who stands feet astride at the entrance, the muscles in his jaw tight, his left hand wrapped around the grip of his sword. It is not the first time he has come upon her with a dead man in her lap, but this time she feels nothing but relief flood her body at the sight of him: Jaime is not a master player of this brutal game, but he has years of battle experience. He was the finest knight in all of Westeros once, and he'll know what has gone wrong, how to save Jon.

He strides forward, and she sobs her thanks in what must be an unintelligible mess of tears and gasps, because he grasps Jon's shoulder and roughly pulls him off of her with a fearsome growl, sounding every bit like a lion.

Sansa desperately tries to grasp Jon, as he flops back onto the camp bed limp as a child's humble rag doll, but she is too slow to catch him.

"Stop!" she commands, and he does, his hand frozen on his sword, for he listens to her as always, even with his green eyes gone as sharp as his blade with no hint of mercy dimming their light. "I've killed him. Gods, Jaime, I killed him," she moans, as she crawls over Jon's form and brushes his black curls off of his fevered forehead.

"Then quit your screaming or you'll have half of his bloody army inside this tent before I can get us out of here," Jaime drawls in hushed tones, as he scans the space and settles upon the empty wineskin that lies discarded beside Jon, the remaining drops spilling out to stain the simple unbleached linens red.

Red like his blood. Their blood, for they share it.

_I would share everything with him_.

As Jaime picks up the wineskin and sniffs at its mouth, Sansa raises her gaze from Jon's pale face and realizes through the fog of her hysteria that she is not the only one that sees the parallels between how Jaime once found her clasping Petyr's dead and rotting body and this scene.

"I didn't _poison_ him," she snaps, pulling the wineskin from his hand, wrenching it free with all the anger that suddenly coils in her muscles. "I wouldn't let him call for the maester," she finishes, her voice breaking, as guilt twists her insides, dousing the rage as quickly as it was ignited.

It is misplaced anyway. Jaime did not understand, but he meant no harm. He did not judge her: he never has.

Sansa's hand hovers over Jon's leg, drawing Jaime's attention to the angry wound there, as she whispers, "I sewed him up myself. I didn't want anyone else touching him."

"Of course you didn't," Jaime says with a harsh bark of a laugh that makes Sansa jump from the bed, the wineskin falling with a dull thud to the ground. If she meant to strike him, to punish him for laughing at Jon's suffering, she is stopped by how he wraps his hand around her arm with frightening speed and leans close enough that he need barely speak to make himself heard. "Get a hold of yourself, Lady Sansa."

His tone is terse, but Sansa is thankful for it. She needed his brutal honesty when he came to the Vale, and she might need it now just as badly. There is a familiar feeling washing over her, a feeling that she can only define as madness, and she must master it, overcome it. There were those that wanted to break her, to reform her, and if she allows the terror to take over, she lets them win. She is playing her own game, one in which she intends to be the victor, although no crown waits for her at its conclusion, only the affirmation that she is a Stark—true and strong.

Jaime releases her and bends down, slipping his arms under Jon's shoulders with greater care than before.

He jerks his head towards the camp bed, saying, "Grab his feet." Sansa hesitates and he repeats his order in a voice that Sansa dares not question, adding as he looks up over the broken ridge of his nose, "He isn't going to die."

The reassurance gives her the strength to close her hands around Jon's ankles, but the respite is short lived. The feel of his body swaying seemingly lifelessly in their grip makes Sansa sob once more. The exertion of lifting him allow it to slip, and Jaime gives her a look that makes her regret her weakness. She had begun to cry a moon after Petyr's death and she hadn't stopped for four days until Jaime came into her chamber unannounced and drunkenly sang songs about Littlefinger's death, toasted his death with more ale, and called her a little fool countless times until her tears dried up, because she couldn't cry anymore in the face of such irreverence and strangely sound logic. But before that she had wept and wept, because he had seemed the only family left to her, even though he'd never truly been family at all, even though she had been _glad_ he was dead.

If Jon died…

Down that road lies madness.

"You may not have killed him, but you'll do him no favors if your crying causes someone else to lift that flap," Jaime lectures, as Jon's senseless head lolls on his pillow.

She swallows, mouthing, "Why?"

Jaime points over her shoulder to some point beyond, outside the tent. "Aegon's forces are just beyond the rise. You don't want the troops going over to that Dragon boy's side if they suspect your brother here is too weak to lead."

"Of course," she says, smoothing her skirts nervously with hands that shake like leaves.

She should have known that—she isn't a green girl anymore, plucked for the North, dreaming of knights and ladies fair. She knows how the game is played, she has been properly instructed, and she knows how very fickle most men are, how loyalty can sway with the cold winds of winter. Petyr would have been so disappointed in her. Sobbing, betraying her emotions like a weak child, endangering Jon's crown.

Except he doesn't wear a crown. No crown of gold, bronze, or iron graces his dark curls. Sansa doesn't believe he needs one. She never paid him all that much mind when they were children, but she wonders whether this solemn leader always lived inside him. Whether their lord father saw it in him—the uncrowned prince—and shielded him from the price that calling might exact.

"Was that full when he began drinking?" Jaime asks, nodding towards the wineskin.

"Yes, but he did not drink all of it, ser. I had my share," Sansa says, straightening her shoulders, taking up the mask of courtesy and cool reserve that she rarely bothers to wear before Jaime.

She shouldn't have let him see, shouldn't have let anyone see how much she needs Jon. She trusts Jaime, trusts to his strange, real honor, but he is not blood. And the mask will help her regain some semblance of control over herself until that control is real. Porcelain, ivory, steel.

"I happen to know how much you can drain from a wineskin," he says flatly, watching her with that penetrating stare that makes her feel in better moments as if she is hunted, desired. "Which is next to nothing."

"What is to be done?" she asks, regaining with each level statement her inner calm.

She will take his wisdom, and then deliver her commands like the lady she had become at the Gates of the Moon.

"You did a fine job stitching the wound and the wine will help him sleep. Other than walking with a limp for a while, he'll be fine."

"I'll bend to your greater experience in the value of drunkenness then, ser. Are you certain he does not require a maester?" she asks, lifting her chin.

He smirks back at her. "And make you share your pretty patient?" Sansa has no chance to bite back a reply, because he immediately says in a lower, kinder voice, "He'd benefit from a fur thrown over him, my lady. You Northerners don't seem to feel it, but he isn't himself at the moment."

Grateful to have a task to attend to, Sansa bustles around Jon's feet and pulls a fur over him, as she vows to better manage herself, so Jon will not suffer for her hysterics. Finishing her simple chore, she moves to sit alongside Jon and reaches out hands that are finally steady to tuck the furs around his shoulders.

She addresses Jaime once more, who has stood silently by during this process, "He'll need someone to guard the tent entrance if we're to keep this from his men tonight, and you won't do. It would look strange to have the Kingslayer standing guard, and his soldiers dislike you."

"Everyone dislikes me," Jaime says, and though his mouth quirks, his eyes do not smile.

"Fetch his squire."

"That lad will do very little to deter anyone that wants entrance, Lady Sansa."

"Fetch his squire," she repeats. "He's trustworthy, and no one will question him with Ghost standing at his side."

Jaime tilts his head, looking plainly annoyed with her. "How do you imagine I'm to get that savage direwolf to follow me back to this tent?"

Sansa extends her hand, as she is wont to do with Ghost, when she wants Ghost to come to her.

"And lose my good hand?"

"Use your golden one then," she says, and she can't help but smile at that—just a little. Even when she is angry with him, even when he is impossible, Jaime Lannister makes her smile. "He'll come with you. He must know Jon isn't well," Sansa explains, turning back to Jon, whose brow is now furrowed in a look that seems to speak of pain infused sleep.

"You Starks are fond of an impossible task: return me to the frozen North, fetch me a wolf, fetch me the moon," he says with a heavy sigh.

"You must look capable, ser, for us to keep asking impossible things of you," she says, as she strokes Jon's temple.

"Your flattery, Lady Stark, is very touching, but don't distract yourself thinking of my heroics. Just keep your Jon Snow quiet if he wants to thrash, and I'll be back with his mutt and that mangy Wildling."

Jaime pauses for a moment and then moves to leave, but she catches his arm, as he steps past her, and holds him fast. Smoothing her thumb over the inside of his wrist—soft, although he is tough elsewhere, she imagines, and it is comforting to think that men too have soft places, vulnerable places—she looks up at him and hopes he sees the confidence she so desperately wants him to see. That she wants Jon to see when he wakes, so that he will not know how she trembled and wailed.

"Your patient is fussing," he observes, and it's true, Jon is muttering something incoherently, his head rolling on the pillow, but Sansa knows Jaime only pointed it out so as to distract her from her purpose. It's why he presses on, "I'd listen to his feverish confessions closely if I were you. You might find what he has to say to be _very_ interesting."

She would dig the half moons of her nails into his flesh to make him stop his nonsensical teasing, but instead she murmurs, "Thank you," because it is not the first time Jaime has been the one to shake her until she came to her senses, came back to herself, became Sansa Stark.

She can allow him his fragile ego. He's a broken thing, after all, and Sansa knows what it is to be broken.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Rating**: T  
><strong>Chapter Word Count<strong>: 3171  
><strong>Chapter Summary<strong>: Asha Greyjoy's plan has merit, but Sansa doesn't know whether she can bear the risk it would entail.  
><strong>Author's Note<strong>: I defended my dissertation this week, so I really appreciated all the good thoughts, fangirls! Now it can be more wall to wall Sansa/Jon. :)

Chapter Seven

"He limps," Asha Greyjoy remarks, not bothering with introductions.

She throws herself down without invitation at Sansa's side and her longsword is gripped in her hand in a way Sansa would almost consider unfriendly. They now share an uncomfortable perch made of rough hewn wood that serves as a bench situated between Jon's tent and her own, meant for those seeking an audience with the king, although Sansa sits there merely whiling away the hours of the afternoon, feeling for the first time as if she has no place here.

Sansa looks into the eyes of this battle hardened woman, who is Theon Greyjoy's sister, and tries to see traces of the lean, handsome boy she once knew.

It is the first time Asha has deigned to speak with her, and Sansa is in no hurry to respond, so she makes no qualms about her slow, evaluative gaze though it is certainly discourteous.

"How bad is the injury?" Asha asks, seemingly unaffected by Sansa's stare, as she pulls a grindstone from a pouch at her waist and begins to sharpen her weapon, dragging it purposefully down the length of her blade.

Sansa has nothing similar to occupy her hands, so she keeps them folded demurely in her lap, as her mind quietly reels.

She asked Jon about Theon just once, and the look that came over her brother's face has kept her quiet on the subject ever since. Even when he speaks of Others, of those who live in ceaseless death, his eyes do not take on that haunted quality they did when Theon's name crossed her lips.

She's seen Jaime look like that before, when he tried to tell her of her lady mother, of someone so changed, so twisted that barely anything remains of what she once was.

Petyr said that Theon burned Winterfell, her birthright, that he slaughtered her little brothers—Bran and Rickon—in the most heinous of ways, but she always found it hard to believe even after all the cruelty she'd experienced at the hands of others. Theon used to look at her in a way that she didn't understand as a girl, but which she would recognize now, because she's seen that look on the faces of other men. Covetously—he looked at her as if she was something he might want for his own. But she would have never thought him capable of killing children, who had been raised alongside him, to acquire that which he desired. No, something else happened to Theon, something so horrible that no one can bring themselves to speak it aloud. It frightens her to think of what might have become of that boy, who lived amongst them, a kraken in the midst of wolves, separated from the sea, just as she had been separated from the snows that mark her home.

Asha raises her brows, looking at Sansa as if she wonders whether Sansa has lost her tongue. "His wound?" she prods.

"It's nothing. Just a nick. I sewed it up myself," Sansa responds evenly though her mind still wanders.

It isn't only Theon that she wonders about: she would like to ask after Jeyne Poole, who she has heard whispers was in Theon's company, but if Theon's fate has been dark, she can only imagine what her dear companion's fate has been. Fear keeps her quiet. Fear and guilt. She counted her own miseries, while thinking very little of Jeyne or Theon or the other young people that had not quite been family, but might as well have been. They have all paid the game's dear price.

"He'll need to fight soon enough again."

Sansa realizes that Asha is motivated by something other than just general concern for her king, and that perhaps she should proceed with greater care.

"And so he shall. Jon is strong," she says, schooling her face to remain tranquil even as she has forgotten to refer to Jon more formally. "There is nothing to worry about, Lady Greyjoy."

Asha laughs, and Sansa looks sidelong at her, wondering what her misstep has been. Sansa is skilled at pleasing men, skilled at speaking in such a way that will lure them into complacency, but she is not so skilled with women. Particularly a woman such as this, who reminds her more of her dirty, headstrong sister than a fine lady. She never understood Arya as a child, and if she still lived, she doubts she would have understood her any better now with years and experience between them. It's no wonder the sight of Asha makes something ache in her chest. Regret, she supposes.

"You're very certain of your brother. It's a good thing to be sure of one's blood. It's why I decided to bring this to you."

"Bring what?"

"A proposal."

Asha pauses, inspecting the edge she has worked on with the pad of her thumb, and it gives Sansa space to wonder why Asha would ever consider discussing anything with her, when she quite clearly has looked upon Sansa thus far as nothing but a bother, something that surely succeeds only in slowing them down.

Asha finishes with her inspection, and apparently finding the sword still wanting, goes back to work, not lifting her eyes from blade, when she asks, "Is Snow strong enough to fight the boy?"

"What boy?"

"Aegon," Asha says with a huff of frustration, while she pulls her grindstone against the edge of her blade purposefully. "Is his wound deep enough that he would lose in close combat with Aegon?"

Sansa's back straightens, as she begins to understand what is being asked of her. "You mean to suggest Jon propose they settle this between the two of them?"

Asha's smile is tight as she finally raises her eyes, and that seems to be the only response she intends on giving. She can see that Asha expects her to object. That she believes Sansa's love for her brother will keep her from even allowing such a suggestion to be made. But, Sansa will not give her that satisfaction. She will hear Asha out, and come to as calm and reasonable a conclusion as she can. This is what the game is, and some of the moves can be terribly frightening, but sometimes the ones which seem the most terrifying stand to accomplish the most.

"Why would Aegon ever agree to such a thing?" Sansa asks, lowering her voice in case the men that stride by their bench might overhear their discussion.

"Because Aegon is a fool," Asha responds with obvious relish. "A foolish boy playing at thrones." Aegon is no younger than my brother, Sansa thinks to remind Asha, but the woman presses on, "He will relish the chance to test himself, and he will think it the honorable thing to do. To spare the rest of his men."

Sansa wonders whether that can be true. Whether there are men other than her upright brother who would be so honorable. Jaime Lannister, perhaps: she can imagine him doing something foolhardy like that, so long as he was certain of winning. Only, Sansa knows that one can never truly be certain. Indeed, if life has taught her anything, it is to expect the worst.

"If what you say is true, Aegon might concede to this proposal, but why would Jon? He has numbers on his side." Numbers that keep him safe.

Even if his wound is healing well, she could stand to lose him in such a fight. She now knows full well what losing him would do to her.

"Numbers will not be of much help if Aegon retreats to King's Landing. We'll lose a substantial number of our men besieging the city with the Dragon Queen still to face. And if he defeats Aegon, the smallfolk will all rally to his side."

Sansa breathes deeply, considering Asha's words. Sansa can see how with dragons coming from the south, such a victory, such a show of strength and honor might give him half of Westeros at least, just as easily as she can see how avoiding a lengthy siege would save lives. Emerging victorious from a fight with Aegon, she suspects that it wouldn't be just the smallfolk who flocked to her brother. He would be unquestionably better positioned to win a war against the Dragon Queen.

Asha is not only skilled on the battlefield: Sansa is beginning to think she is rather shrewd as well. That doesn't mean, however, that she has no misgivings about the plan.

"You might be right, Lady Greyjoy, but it seems too much of a risk for a king to take," Sansa says, nodding in recognition at a knight who moves by them, heading for Jon's tent.

Asha shrugs, as if Sansa's worry is nothing to her. "I've fought by your brother's side and I know what he's capable of when healthy. My only concern is that he is _presently_ healthy."

Sansa fights the urge to twist her skirts in her hands, when she says, "Only Jon can say for sure," for she fears that Jon might approve of this plan. That this might prove to be a legitimate threat to his safety.

"Does his wound heal cleanly?"

Sansa flushes red, her cheeks going hot with shame. He won't let her look at it. Her services are no longer required. Maester Mullin tends to him now. She doesn't know whether it is because he knows of her panic or whether he thinks her unsuited to the task, but she hasn't been alone with him since he awoke from his fevered sleep two sunrises ago.

"I shouldn't speak of the king's health and neither should you," Sansa says with a haughtiness that she intends to mask her growing discomfort. "You might bring this idea before the next meeting of the council if you think it a wise course to take—to risk the life of the Prince, of the Lightbringer."

Asha sighs heavily, clearly annoyed with her once more, and her tone is sarcastic, when she replies, "You can't risk someone who is fated to save us all." Asha pockets her grindstone and props her hand on her narrow hip before she continues. "I could shout this idea in front of the council, but I think it would be better coming from you. He has a…" Asha pauses, the one corner of her mouth quirking, "special fondness for you."

Sansa thinks of those long night hours she watched over Jon, and how he tossed and turned, his forehead beaded with sweat, his lips murmuring her name in desperate tones, but murmuring the name of someone else just as often.

"You overestimate my influence."

Asha stands, sheathing her longsword with a practiced motion, and turns, facing Sansa with slightly narrowed eyes.

"I don't think I do, _Lady_ _Stark_. Just don't let him agree to it if he isn't well. I trust him to swing a sword, but I don't trust him to rise from the dead a second time."

…

Sansa waited until the knight inside Jon's tent left to lift the corner the flap and call inside, "Your Grace?"

"Is that you, sister?"

Her answer in the affirmative leads to an immediate invitation to enter and Sansa ducks inside, emerging into the dim light of the tent to find Jon sitting at his camp desk, hunched over with a quill in his hand. He smiles quickly, glancing up at her and resting the quill atop whatever letter he has been pouring over.

"There's no rest for the wicked," he says, as he cracks his back by bracing his hands against the camp table and pushing.

"Then you won't like what I've come to say, I'm afraid."

His brows draw together, as he stands and moves around the desk to come to stand before her in his usual black. It suits him in a way red or gold or white never would.

For not the first time, Sansa cannot read the look he gives her, when he says, "I can't imagine that."

"I come bearing the details of a scheme hatched by Asha Greyjoy. She means for me to sell it to you."

"I take it back." Jon pauses for a moment to rub his chin through his beard, which hasn't been trimmed since the Gates of the Moon. He looks such a man that she has to squint to remember him as a boy. "A scheme?"

"Perhaps I shouldn't call it that," Sansa says, attempting to summon a carefree smile that she can't make herself feel.

"What is it that Asha wants?"

Sansa bites her lower lip, considering for just a moment whether she should—or rather, whether she can make herself—bring this to Jon, but she cannot deny the potential wisdom of this plan, so she finds the strength to speak, "For you to fight Aegon."

Jon crosses his arms over his chest, and his face takes on that solemn quality that reminds her so of their lord father.

"I don't suppose you mean in battle."

"No. Single combat," she says, clasping her hands before her, free of gloves though everyone else seems bothered by the cold of winter. Everyone except for Jon. "She thinks the people of Westeros will fall in line behind your banners should you dispatch Aegon in such an honorable manner. That they'll be certain you're the king sent to them to slay dragons."

"What do you think?"

She would rather not admit to it, but she tells him, "I think she might be right," because her counsel might be of use to him, and she has wanted nothing more than to be useful.

"Truly?" he asks, turning slightly away from her. "He's my brother, Sansa."

Sansa has been weighed down with the thought of losing her brother without sparing one thought to what Jon would stand to lose should he actually win. And they have already lost so much.

Sansa casts her eyes on the ground, where the brown grass of the field is flattened beneath their feet, when she asks softly, "What did you intend to do with him when you won the war, Jon?"

He looks almost fiercely at her, but the flash of intensity in his grey eyes fades just as quickly as it appeared. His shoulders slump and his arms fall at his side, and Sansa despises herself for having made him look so defeated.

"I'm sorry," she murmurs, although she knows apologies will do nothing to lighten his burden.

"No, you're right. I never could bring myself to think that far ahead. Sometimes I think this war will bring nothing but grief."

She finds herself stepping forward and raising her hand to his cheek, trying to comfort him the only way she knows how.

"Don't do it, Jon. I don't want you to, and I should have never brought her suggestion to you."

"You obviously thought the plan had some merit," he says, and Sansa drags her thumb across his cheek, feeling the muscles work beneath her touch as he speaks.

"In theory, yes," she begins, but he interrupts, his voice rough and low.

"If he is who he claims to be…if _I_ am who they say I am, killing Aegon would make me a kinslayer. Who would want a kinslayer for a king?"

"Winners write history," Sansa says, repeating what sounds so much like one of Petyr's lessons. "If he is defeated, he was no Dragon. You will be the hero—that is all anyone will remember."

Her fingers unfurl into the dark curls at his temples. The curls that make it so hard for her to think of him as anything other than a Stark. His eyes too, she thinks as they seem to darken at the motion of her fingers dragging through his curls.

He says her name, not aloud, but she hears it in nonetheless, and it sounds like a plea.

Her other hand finds his chest, where his heart beats beneath her palm. It must be girlish whimsy to think that hers beats in time with his, and she almost asks him to check, but instead says on halting breath, "It's too risky. It's selfish, I know, but I can't stand to lose you."

Her stomach sickens at the thought, and she sees him as he was just a few days ago, unconscious on that bed, his face even paler than usual, the color drained from his lips. She doesn't want to see him crumpled on the battlefield, painted in his own blood made to flow from the unforgiving slice of a sword. She can stitch a wound, but she cannot bring the dead back to life. There would be nothing she could do.

"I'm worried about _my_ brother," she whispers.

It feels as if he is leaning into her touch, and she thinks to step into his chest, but then he abruptly pulls away and turns his back on her. Sansa's arms are left hovering in the air for a moment before she presses them to her middle. She concentrates on how each breath inflates her chest, reminding her that she is alive and as long as Jon stands before her here, he is alive as well.

He clears his throat, breaking the heavy tension that hangs between them, before asking, "Asha believes I can defeat him?"

Sansa swallows drily. "Yes, if your leg is healed."

"My leg is strong," he says with a dismissive shake of his head. "You were as good as your word about your skill."

And yet he will not let her near his wound.

She can hear him sigh before he continues, "Just because it makes me uncomfortable doesn't mean it isn't a plan worth considering. It would save lives no matter who is the victor."

"Jon, please don't speak like that," Sansa says, and her voice must move him, because he looks over his shoulder, his lips pursed in concern and holds out his hand to her.

Unwinding her arms from around herself, she takes it without hesitation and squeezes.

"If you do this, you must promise me to win," she begs, though she knows it is a promise he may not be able to keep.

"I can't say yet. I need to sleep on it," he says, which isn't quite the promise she was looking for.

Sansa nods, and moves to leave him to his thoughts, but Jon holds fast, as she takes a hesitant step, leaving their arms stretched between them, their fingers entwined.

Jon stares at their hands, when he says, "I'd have you here. I'd dine alone with you tonight."

"Are you certain?" she asks, thinking of how he has seemed somewhat uneasy around her these past two days, as if he doesn't know where to rest his gaze and words fail him.

"A man can be too much alone with his thoughts. It will be a comfort to me to have you at my side."

"That's what I want to be, Jon. Always."


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter** **Rating**: T  
><strong>Chapter Word Count<strong>: 2916  
><strong>Chapter Summary<strong>: Jon could not sleep last night, not so much for fear of his own life, but for what might become of Sansa should he perish.  
><strong>Author's Note<strong>: I present to you the following chapter as "Dr" Elizabeth. Thank you to everyone who very kindly wished me good luck. It went just about as well as it could go, and I'm happy to be able to bring you fic now on a more regular schedule.

Chapter Eight

Jon can only see glimpses of his sister, as his nervous squire needlessly retightens every leather strap on his dull armor and his men stand round him in a ring, imparting advice and making boasts that Jon doesn't hear. He supposes it makes them all feel as if they are contributing to what might be a great moment, but it's all completely useless at this point. Either he is skilled enough with a sword to defeat Aegon or he is not. Either the gods will smile on him or they will not. Either the day will be his or these are some of his last waking moments.

Everyone is nervous, full of energy that they cannot properly expend, energy which expresses itself in eager chatter and shifting limbs. The hum that he can hear through the walls of his tent speaks to not only his soldiers' anticipation, but also of Aegon's forces' as well, and he looks sideways, as if he can see through the canvas out beyond to where his half brother might be receiving similar empty counsel.

There is only one person's advice he wants to hear at this moment, only one person he wants to be with in what might be his final moments. Aegon might be his brother, the true heir of Rhaegar Targaryen, but Sansa Stark is the woman he was raised as a boy to know as his sister, and her words, her presence soothes him the way nothing else can.

He dismisses everyone with a rough command, thankful for the authority that kingship affords at times like this. But, as everyone files from the tent, he stops Sansa from following suit by speaking her name in a softer tone. Ghost, who has stood sentinel during the process of donning his armor, lopes towards her and nudges her hand with his head, as if he too doesn't care for her to leave.

Jon exhales, when her bright blue eyes meet his with understanding, and doesn't need to ask for Sansa to come to him and slip her hand—warm and smooth—into his.

"Shall I tell them all to break camp? So that you and I might head for the North and leave this foolishness behind?" she asks with a sweet little smile that still manages to lift his spirits, though her hand quakes in his, a telltale sign of her own fear.

She would leave this tent and command his army with lifted chin to scatter to the winds if he asked it of her. Just as she offered to burn the missive he'd penned that set these plans in motion. She would think no less of him if he decided they should retire to Winterfell to rule a frozen wasteland, fighting off the living dead and their unholy masters, as they swarm over the North. She might even prefer it. But she has faith in him, which makes him feel stronger than before. Faith in him today, facing Aegon, and faith in him as a king.

"You can do this, Jon," she says—her eyes agleam like a wildling warrior woman—as if she has heard his thoughts, while she smoothes a lily white hand over his breastplate.

He captures her hand in his and presses a hard kiss to her soft, uncalloused palm, staring into her eyes with an intensity that might otherwise startle her if the situation was not so serious, but she stares back at him, open and present. It might be misusing her to take such a liberty, even if it settles his nerves. He breathes deeply, lets her hand slip, and silently orders himself to focus on the task ahead, instead of the feel of his lips brushing her bare skin.

"You think I should kill a brother I will never know?"

"I think you can win," she corrects, though it means the same thing. "And winning need not end in the shedding of his blood," she says with less certainty.

He rubs his thumb over the ridge of the knuckles on the delicate hand he still holds, urging her to continue with what seems a mad assurance, for it is just the sort of assurance he desperately wants and needs.

"I've been thinking on it, and it seems to me that at the point when you might best him, you can offer him mercy. Offer him peace. A place in your court. I know well that it isn't power that you seek, so you might even offer to share the crown. Why can the dragon not have two heads?"

It's never been done that way, Jon wants to say, but the part of him that dreads what he faces latches onto her tender suggestion. He suspects that she means for him to make such an offer so that his guilt might be assuaged, when Aegon refuses and bloodshed is necessary after all, but he thanks her for it nonetheless.

Of course, it might not come to the shedding of Aegon's blood at all. His blood is just as likely to stain the grass red, and he must address that possibility with her. He could not sleep last night, not so much for fear of his own life, but for what might become of her should he perish.

"Keep Ghost at your side."

She pulls her hand free of his grip with a jerk, as if he has said something that she finds entirely offensive.

"No, he should be with you."

"Sansa. Keep him at your side. If this goes badly…"

A little line has formed between her brows, when she demands, "Jon, stop."

"Listen to me," he grits out, and she goes silent, though she looks no less obstinate, her nostrils flaring and her lips pursed.

This is a confession he is leery of making, but he forces himself to speak. "I sometimes…I dream that I'm Ghost. I'm with him, I _am_ him, and I know he'll keep you safe. Even after I'm…"

He cannot finish, because she has reached up as he rushed through his confession, and her fingertips press to his lips to stop him from speaking the words. He shouldn't, but he kisses them. His heart stops, waiting for her to pull away, but she only tilts her head and looks up at him pleadingly as she settles her hand on the shoulder plate of his armor—a feather light touch that he cannot feel, though he can still taste her on his lips.

"You're going to win, Jon."

If words alone could make something true, Sansa's seem to Jon to have the strength to make it so. But that is pure illusion.

Sansa has known misery, she has known grief. She bore witness to the beheading of their lord father. She is not an innocent young girl, and she must know that his victory is not certain. It is a reality he must face for her sake, and some of what he must say makes jealousy boil in his veins.

"Where is the Kingslayer?"

She looks confused, her eyes crinkling as her head shakes.

"Where is he right now?" Jon says with some urgency, for their time together here must come to an end soon, and she needs to hear him out.

"Outside."

Of course. Never far from her, which is just what he is counting on. "Good. Tell him I want you out of here the minute it seems as if I stand to lose."

The set of her jaw shows her displeasure, and she begins to object, but he cuts her off, continuing, "I know you've seen horrible things, Sansa. That's not what I would spare you. I'd spare you becoming his prisoner. I don't know what Aegon would do with you if he were to win. Do you understand?"

Whatever Jon thinks of Jaime Lannister personally, he trusts him to keep Sansa safe from Aegon or those that would think to lay hands on Jon Snow's sister.

Her lower lip trembles, but she manages to nod. She is brave. So very brave. Unbreakable strength beneath her soft, beautiful façade. He wants it all: he has the benefit of her strength, but he wants her beauty as well, he wants to have the right to touch her, to bask in her loveliness.

"I want to give you something," she says, fumbling with her sleeve until she produces a delicately embroidered white handkerchief emblazoned with the House Stark sigil. She holds it out to him, eyes fixed on this token, as opposed to seeking his. "I know you haven't asked it of me and I know you're not strictly a Stark, but I thought carrying something from me…"

"You did this?" he asks, taking it from her and examining the needlework.

"Yes."

He doesn't know enough to judge, but it seems to him the finest work he has ever seen, and the sentiment behind the token means more to him than its beauty.

"Thank you, Sansa."

She almost manages to smile at that, and he asks her to assist him with the tying of it on his arm, high and out of the way. He watches her hands work, deft and unwavering. He wonders whether all Northern women are this brave, whether the snows of winter forge them as babes into warriors that wait only to emerge in the full bloom of womanhood. He already knows they are not as universally gentle.

As she finishes tying her knot, he thinks for a moment what it might be like if she was truly his queen and this token meant something more than a symbol of her sisterly affection. If their last moments alone here were not constrained by uncertainty and guilt, so that he might tell her everything in his heart, but she blinks up at him completely unaware of the struggle within.

Now seems the wrong time to confess his feelings with death waiting to steal him from her forever, but if he is to die, he would like to kiss her. Just once. He has certainly spent more time than is suitable given his sizable responsibilities imagining it. Imagining folding her body into his and kissing her until her breath comes fast against his mouth. Until he can feel her bosom rise and fall against him. Until she clings to him as if it will keep them both alive. It might even be a lucky thing to steal a kiss with hair that red, kissed by fire. Of course, he would blithely latch onto any justification so that he might kiss her.

He frames her face with his hands, his fingers weaving into the loose, unbound tresses of her hair.

"Would you forgive me?" he asks, his voice sounding rough and uneven, as he leans forward until their brows touch.

"Forgive what?" she asks, and it is like he imagined, feeling the whisper of her words against his lips.

His answer is a kiss. Not the kiss he wants, not the kiss that makes his muscles tense with expectation, because that is forbidden to him. He places a kiss on her cheek, below the rosy apple of her cheekbone, with all the composure he can summon, and perhaps he is only capable of this restraint because of the hard armor between them, protecting him from his passions as much as the blow of a sword. The kiss is close enough that the corners of their mouths brush, but it is still what any observer would call a brotherly kiss.

Except for his hands. He realizes belatedly that his traitorous hands tightly grasp her hair, fisting thick, heavy ropes of hair, so that her head tilts back and he need barely lean down to kiss her.

His eyes dart over her face, searching for what must be her discomfort at his rough handling of her, but her lashes fan across her cheeks and her lips slightly part in what almost seems an invitation. He dips his head, burying his face in her shoulder, so that he isn't tempted to steal the kiss he sees in his mind's eye. He does his best to memorize the smell of her, the feel of her, as his hands skate over the fine bones exposed by the neckline of her gown, and then grips her shoulders and shifts her back a step, as he straightens up.

She begins to speak his name, and he stops her, because if he hears her out, he will never be able to leave this tent.

"Find the Kingslayer, Sansa. I'll see you after this is over with."

It's as much a promise as he can give.

…

He barely hears her say his name—no 'ser', no formality or courtesy, just a gently spoken _Jaime_—over the roll of drums that echo through the valley. But he looks up at the sound, looks up from the fire, little more than embers now glowing before her tent, where he has waited for her to finish with her brother, and he can see that as she stands beside a silent white direwolf unshed tears threaten to spill from her eyes.

He can guess at how she is feeling, he sees the closeness that has sprung up between them and has the misfortune to understand it better than most.

He stands, takes her by the elbow a little gingerly with the wolf looking on, and whispers into the perfect shell of her ear, "Don't let them see you cry. You must be like ice today."

"I know."

"Good. Is it time?" She nods. "Fine, then I'll walk ten paces behind you. It wouldn't do to have you escorted by the Kingslayer to your brother's moment of triumph," he says with a grin.

"No," she says, closing her ungloved hand over his, keeping it trapped to her. "Jon wants you to stay close. You _and_ Ghost."

That isn't what he was expecting to hear, and he cocks a brow at her, waiting for her to amend herself or explain further.

"If things don't seem to be going his way," she manages to say, but then stands stiffly beside him like a mute.

How heroic to willingly hand over the fair maiden to the terrible monster. He wonders if Jon realizes that Sansa isn't a maid. When Jaime arrived in the Vale, he was already too late to save the maid in the tower. There are no fair maidens, no heroes, and hardly anything worth saving in this world.

The bitter, cruel, tortured part of him wants to remind Sansa that her Jon Snow is just a man and she might need his protection yet, if Aegon stands triumphant, but she hardly needs reminding, and she clutches him with a ferocity that makes him want to pet her and soothe her instead, so that she regains the courage he knows she has.

The direwolf seems to sense her distress and nudges her hand, but she gives no response. Jaime cannot stand to see this blank terror on her face: it reminds him too much of when he first found her and wondered whether the Stark girl was beyond retrieval.

"I'll get you home, as I promised," he finishes for her. That usually calms her—thoughts of home.

He has two horses prepared for their escape. Not their horses, for that would have looked too obvious, too much like he was expecting Jon Snow to lose, which would not go over well amongst this crowd of Northerners and wildlings, but he has two horses saddled that could see them fast from this place until they would need to switch to mountain ponies to get them through the heavy snows of the North. And though he has but one hand, he would see her safely ensconced within the crumbling walls of Winterfell. Sometimes he thinks that purpose is the only reason he is still alive.

"There will be no need of that," Sansa says softly with a tilt of her chin, as if working up the courage to believe it. "But I will feel better with you at my side, ser."

Given her words, Jaime is glad he did not shatter her fragile hopes with cutting comments. She reminds him of himself, desperate to cling to lofty ideals even as she's torn them up with her own hands. An expert at manipulation, sweet words and sweeter poison, and the gentle kiss of a knife's blade at an enemy's throat—Sansa knows all of these things. She is just broken enough that he sometimes distracts himself by pondering whether all their crooked pieces might make a whole. But he has no practice in _making_ someone fit, in developing an accord. For all he knows, he would make a mess of it and only succeed in breaking her further. And he couldn't bear that.

Jon Snow might be better suited to the task if he were not fighting for the Iron Throne.

"They have a place marked out for you to watch," he says, as he begins to draw her away to watch yet another tragedy unfold. Sansa does not thirst for power, does not desire it the way Cersei did, and even if Aegon dies today, she will not be able to stand and cheer with eager bloodlust. No, today will be a tragedy no matter the outcome, as brother fights brother. At least his family will not be to blame for this one. "I'll be right at your side."


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Rating**: T (There's some blood in this one, but nothing too explicit.)  
><strong>Chapter Word Count<strong>: 2985  
><strong>Chapter Summary<strong>: This is no tourney: this is terribly real, and Sansa's heart and perhaps her sanity hang in the balance.  
><strong>Author's Note<strong>: An update! *throws confetti* It's not all hearts and flowers though. You were expecting that, weren't you? ;)

Chapter Nine

Sansa walks purposefully with her head held high, Jon's beast padding at her side, as if she is assured of her brother, the rightful king's victory. She walks with such regal composure that more than half of the men she passes go to their knees even though she is not their queen. Not yet, Jaime thinks, clenching his jaw at the thought of Sansa forced to spend her years inside the cage that is King's Landing with a crown that might as well be a noose around her neck. She has always spoken of home, and King's Landing is as far from home as she can possibly get, even if Jaime were to suggest they sail for the East.

The air feels oppressive like it does before a thunderstorm splits the sky, as they approach the raised dais they have arranged for Lady Stark. It is a simple, uncovered structure, but when she climbs the steps and arranges herself on the chair, her skirts and furs draping over its sides in a cascade of her house colors in grey and white, it suddenly seems fit for a queen. A queen with a wolf at her command—a true queen of the North.

He waits for Ghost to choose which side of Sansa he prefers, not wishing to tangle with her other appointed guard and then steps close enough to her chair that her skirts brush his boots. He means to be within reach so that she will be able to hear him even if the lines of men gathered on either side should begin to shout and beat their swords upon their shields.

"I don't like this suspense," she directs to him without lifting her gaze, her eyes scanning the field.

"Neither do I, my lady."

Battle makes his blood sing, but standing or sitting a horse waiting for the first clash of swords makes a knot of all men's stomachs, and since he is not to fight today, there will be no release for that tight feeling. This, he thinks, is why men find comfort in whores before and after battle. Jaime has never indulged out of a faithfulness to his sister that she failed to return—Lancel, Osmund Kettleblack, and Moon Boy—and he finds the wildlings' spearwives and hard looking Northern whores a rather pitiful group from which to choose, should he ever care to.

Even now it is hard to think of anyone but Cersei. Sansa certainly outshines this lot, and consumes more of his waking thoughts than he would have ever thought possible, but he doubts she'll care to warm his bed tonight, so the point is moot. Either she'll have a victory to celebrate with her brother or they will be riding hard north.

"Here they come," he says, nodding towards the men designated to represent Aegon and Jon's interests.

The two men step out onto the field and come together with elevated ritualistic importance to reconfirm the terms of this agreement that has already been well established through parchment and diplomacy. Aegon's representative is dressed in silks that must leave the man's balls tight to his body in this bloody cold. Jon's is in black wool, looking exactly like at least a third of his forces.

Jaime wasn't privy to the details of the arrangement they seek to affirm, because he is still the Kingslayer to all concerned save Sansa. The details shall remain a mystery too, since from this distance nothing can be heard of what goes on between them, but that is just as well. Any closer and Jaime would worry about his ability to speed Sansa from this place.

Sansa adjusts the ruff of fur about her shoulders a little restlessly, tendrils of her hair mixing with the fine tufts of white, as she fidgets and watches the two men interact, and finally murmurs, "Do you think they draw this out to increase their own importance?"

Jaime laughs with a short exhalation of breath, his shoulders shrugging. "Well, little men such as that must do _something_ to have a share in the glory."

There's a flash in her eyes, and he realizes he's triggered some memory, made her think of Littlefinger, no doubt.

Her eyes narrow, as she says, "I think I hate them both for it."

"Give me Snow's man's name and I'll bring you his head," he says with intended levity, but the last of his words are nearly drowned out.

For as the agents finally retire a little regretfully to their respective sides, relinquishing the attention of thousands of eyes, a divide appears in the line of Aegon's troops. The men part for someone in shining silver armor amid a blare of trumpets and twisting banners that give this a strangely festive atmosphere that is not entirely suitable in Jaime's opinion. This is no tourney: this is terribly real, and Sansa's heart and perhaps her sanity hang in the balance. Not just a ridiculous throne. The noise is made by Aegon's trumpeters, for the Northern army has nothing but elk horns to blow for charges. Indeed, the Northern army as a whole looks somewhat shabbier than Aegon's, but gleaming armor and freshly trimmed beards do not win wars. Jaime knows this well enough, although he and his armor always shined the brightest until his golden hand became the gaudiest thing about him.

Sansa's eyes are riveted to Aegon as he emerges and Jaime's are drawn to the young man as well. It is the first glimpse Jaime has had of this boy who calls himself Rhaegar's heir. Even with his helmet clutched beneath his arm and his face free from obstruction, Jaime can't make out much more than the boy's silvery hair and lean physique, so there's no way to trace a resemblance. Jaime fingers the hilt of his sword with a left hand that will never be what the right one was so effortlessly, thinking that a young man's eyes could make it out.

A similar spontaneous column forms at their right side as Jon's troops part to let their chosen king enter the field, and what the Northerners lack in pomp, they make up for in throaty screams and shouts that would unnerve the most battle hardened knight. He notices how Sansa's grip on the arms of her chair tightens as Jon strides past them and towards Aegon without a sidelong glance. The sound of the men's shouts might fray her nerves or perhaps it is just the sight of her brother taking the field against his foe that makes her knuckles go white.

"Perhaps the chatter of men wasn't so bad after all," he leans down to offer.

Her reply is terse: "Perhaps not."

However, when the two kings meet, it seems they are in for yet more interminable discussions, for neither immediately places their helmet upon their head nor draws their sword, and this time it seems as if things are more heated. The agents should have taken care of all the details, that was their role, so Jaime cannot imagine what causes these men to shout back and forth at each other.

Sansa looks up at Jaime, her colorless lips pressed into a thin line. "He doesn't want to do this."

"He best fight as if he does," he responds, nodding towards the field where Aegon is finally slipping his helmet on.

If Jon Snow doesn't fight with every ounce of skill in his body, Jaime will curse him for Sansa's sake, since she will be left to live with the consequences of his honorable reluctance. No, Jon Snow surely doesn't want the name Kinslayer—a name like that can follow a man—but he best earn it for Sansa.

Jon hangs back for a moment, making Jaime wonder if he really means to allow Aegon to run him through without a fight, but he eventually follows suit, and as his arm rises to lift his helmet, Jaime sees a flash of white. There is a token—what looks to be a white handkerchief—tied about his arm, standing out all the more unmistakably against the dull metal of his plate. It doesn't take great genius to guess to whom it belongs. Jaime is curious if this means that things are finally settled between them, if there were words and deeds inside Jon's tent. He knows how he would have handled Cersei if they had a moment alone before single combat, but there is nary a hair amiss on Sansa's head.

Jon Snow is a fool.

"He must have offered him peace terms," Sansa says, her voice remarkably steady given that the two Targaryen claimants are drawing their swords as she speaks.

"How very like a Stark. Are you entirely certain your Jon Snow isn't your lord father's bastard?"

An offer of peace—peace that comes with terms attached, no doubt—at this moment is as like to anger the young man, who will be eager to prove himself and take Jon's offer as a slight, a challenge to his honor and dignity, as succeed, and clearly Aegon did not accept Jon's offer. Jaime would think it foolishness to make such an offer, but emotions can sometimes make a man fight less cleanly, with less care, and Aegon's anger might not be a bad thing for Snow's chances. Jaime doubts Jon devised the plan with that outcome in mind, but they will know shortly whether it was a wise course.

The first clash of their swords rings out across the field and causes a corresponding twitch in Sansa's cheek, which Jaime observes out of the corner of his eye, but she gives no other outward signs of distress. Nothing that the men about them could read, which is as it should be. She is the queen of ice, the perfect sister to the man they call king.

The sound may have given her pause, but it was nothing more than a test, a practice blow to feel each other out. The three that follow are of the same type, but a roar goes up from Aegon's side as he makes a stab at Jon that only just misses his shoulder. It is enough to make Jon's wolf come to his feet.

"Grab hold, Sansa," Jaime only manages to say before the wolf lunges forward, but she catches him by the fur of his neck.

"With me, Ghost," she says firmly and smoothes a hand over his head.

It wouldn't do to have the wolf win this fight for him, but though the beast seems taut with unspent energy, he minds Sansa's command for now.

Jaime finally sees the set of Jon's shoulders change, as Aegon makes one wild thrust after another, never finding his mark. Aegon fights like someone intent on proving something. Jon fights with the cool reserve of experience, though they are of the same age. The undead, Jon has fought those who have nothing to lose.

"He's seen worse than this," Jaime muses aloud without lifting his eyes from the scene before him.

With every slice, Jon dances back, spinning, avoiding the blows meant for his arm, his breast, his thigh. Aegon makes a looping cut aimed at Jon's head, but Jon's shield catches the blow with a heavy thud. He'll feel that all the way up into his shoulder, but he stays light on his feet, ducking another slice entirely.

The sides are already beginning to creep forward, a press of men who wish to get a better look at the fight before them. They have pledged not to interfere, but Jaime keeps a sharp eye for anyone that might think to get too close to Sansa. Otherwise, there is no reason to consider their escape thus far. The fight is but begun, and Jaime certainly has no reason to sound the alarm. Aegon fights with obvious passion, and if he is normally skilled with the sword, his skill is eclipsed by desire. If he continues like this, he'll wear himself out with his armor heavier than Jon's, his movements less precise. It is only his youth that keeps his movements so quick.

Of course, when a man makes that many thrusts, some are bound to land by accident or plan, and Jaime can hear the hiss of Sansa's sharp exhalation through clenched teeth, when Aegon's greatsword catches Jon in the joints between his plate and red flows over the dark metal. The sight of one's own blood causes a coward to curl up, but it causes a fire to burn in real men, a desire to seek revenge for spilled blood, and as soon as one and then another wound is opened, Jon begins to push forward, taking the offensive, moving around Aegon in an arc, catching him under the gauntlet of his sword hand, by his left hip, at the back of his right knee with careful slices and thrusts that force Aegon ever back into the press of his own men. Some of the blows glance off plate, but others find their mark.

Blood now slicks both men's armor, though Aegon's is more obvious against the gleam of his highly polished armor. Jaime is unsure whether he's truly had the worst of it or whether it only appears so, given the contrast, but Aegon's forces give way as the two men move closer to his lines, and Aegon stumbles, as he brings his arms up awkwardly to block a feint. Jon moves quickly enough to deliver a real blow—under the chin. Aegon's head jerks and he stumbles again, this time nearly falling to his knees.

The Northern crowd now begins to roar in earnest, as Jon's sword slams into Aegon's breastplate, sending him tumbling to the ground.

There are shouts of 'kill him' echoing all around them, but Jon stands unmoving, his sword held at his side.

"Take the terms," Sansa says just loud enough that Jaime can hear her.

He frowns at that. "Better to end it." This almost seems like toying with the boy, though Jon no doubt believes in his honorable offer, whatever it might be.

But the boy is already finding his feet again and charging forward, determined to fight on, though he does it no better than a moment earlier. His sword does not rise as high as it did initially, and Jon escapes his charge with a twist, catching Aegon in the back with a slash that reverberates across the field. Jaime can almost feel himself where that blow would ache—low in his back—and he can see how it makes Aeon's shoulders slump with pain and exhaustion.

Aegon turns to face Jon, his chest heaving, as he throws aside his shield and uses both hands to raise his sword over his head. It lowers fast, a great hacking motion delivered at Jon's head, and it catches Jon's shoulder, bouncing off the plate there. The failed attempt leaves Aegon off balance, and Jon pursues, hitting him with the flat of his sword in the thighs. It's a dull thump and a humiliating hit, meant to cause no damage but send Aegon to his knees again, which it does. Aegon scrambles in the frost covered grass and frozen mud, crawling for his discard shield, but Jon kicks it out of the way, sending it skidding across the field.

Jon lunges forward and smacks Aegon upside his helmet once more with the flat of his sword. The noise will ring in his ears and make his head pound, but it does nothing more than stun. Again, it is a humiliating strike.

As Aegon wavers on his knees, struggling to maintain a grip on his sword, Jon pulls his own helmet off, and it is clear that he screams something to the man at his feet.

"Take the terms," Sansa shouts.

"He won't," Jaime breathes.

He knows it with gut wrenching certainty. Just as he would never do such a thing, neither will Aegon. He can see it in the way Aegon drunkenly swings from his knees at Jon, the way he tries shakily to find his feet only to be knocked back with another blow. They are going to watch him die by his own choice.

Another feeble jab, and Jon knocks the sword from Aegon's hand, leaving him disarmed entirely. Jon shouts, his face red with the effort, but his words are obscured by shouts on both sides and the neat lines of men begin to fold in, encircling the two combatants as the end draws near. Aegon pulls his helmet free and tilts his neck, offering a place to deliver a clean blow, but Jon pauses, tosses aside his shield, and offers his unencumbered hand to Aegon. It is rebuffed with the back of Aegon's gauntlet, and the young man keels onto his right arm, just barely managing to stay upright.

Jon seems to believe him now, seems to believe whatever Aegon yells back in response to his honorable offers of peace. He raises his sword to the boy's neck.

She may have killed with her own hands, but there is still an innocence that hangs about Sansa's finely boned shoulders that makes him want to protect her. She truly is worth saving even if she is perfectly capable of saving herself, even if she is broken. In a world without songs, she is the maid deserving rescue: he would spare her the sight of brother killing brother.

"Look away, my lady."

"Is this the end then?" she asks, her voice thinned by nerves.

He looks down into her blue eyes, which blink as if she stares into the summer sun.

"Yes. Turn away your gaze."

"No. I can't."

He rests his hand on her shoulder, as he urges, "No one will think less of you."

She turns her attention back to the field, however.

"How could I? Jon can't look away."


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter Rating**: T  
><strong>Chapter Word Count<strong>: 2340  
><strong>Chapter Summary<strong>: It's quite nearly true that Jon doesn't smile, and Sansa regrets the truth of it. Not simply because she is struck by how handsome he is when he does smile at her, how his eyes crinkle, how his full lips curve.  
><strong>Author's Note<strong>: The asoiafkinkmeme totally distracted me, but I think I might make some people happy in this chapter. Thank you for being patient, my lovies. :)

Chapter Ten

Jon is quiet, so very quiet since his victory. It barely feels like a victory, though the men in camp celebrate loudly enough, and Sansa can tell that everyone in Jon's council is afraid to seem too pleased with the outcome. It is as if they are all pretending that Aegon never existed. They have buried his memory as well as his body in a matter of days, and now they direct their attention towards the last remaining problem—Daenerys' invasion—as they march towards King's Landing. They all walk with care, all except for Asha, whose crooked smile speaks volumes about how little she thinks of the great tragedy of Aegon's death.

Asha isn't the only one: Sansa cannot bring herself to regret it, for Jon is here, safe, and whole, but she regrets the effect the victory has had on him.

He is silent, but when she sat alongside of him today, while the men discussed potential allies and those who have already rallied to their side—today a raven arrived from Dorne, where they are not friends of Daenerys or her fire breathing dragons and are amenable to siding with Jon with Aegon dead—she could feel his pain. It radiated through her, burning like a fever behind her eyes. It made her feel heavy and listless, and it kept her quiet, as quiet as her solemn brother.

That is why she asked Jaime to sit fireside with her as the sun dipped beneath the blanket of snow that once again covers the ground, the world donning white, making black hulks of the men who range the camp. She invited him, because she can count on Jaime to speak, and she has wine to share with him, which loosens his tongue more. The sound of his familiar voice—lazy and deep—helps distract her from her worries. So too do his japes, though they are all tinged with a hard edge, as if he too is not unaffected by the events unfolding around them. She knows he doesn't have a stake in Jon's claim; it must be something else that causes his disquiet. Perhaps it is the thought of King's Landing. She can certainly understand and commiserate on that point.

Their halfhearted banter is not long lived, however, for Jaime nods towards something behind her shoulder, and she turns on her camp stool to see Jon's squire walking towards them with Ghost at his side.

"It looks like your Black King means to summon you. What merriment do you imagine he has planned for you?"

"Ser," she murmurs too tenderly to be mistaken for a real scolding.

"I've never seen him smile," he says a little too loudly before taking a swig from his wineskin, as the boy stops before their fire and shifts on his feet.

It's quite nearly true that Jon doesn't smile, and Sansa regrets the truth of it. Not simply because she is struck by how handsome he is when he does smile at her, how his eyes crinkle, how his full lips curve.

"Excuse me, milady."

The boy stops his awkwardly shuffling, freezes like a prey animal, and she sees that Jaime is giving him a rather fearsome scowl, as if he means to scare him away. He might succeed if she doesn't speak up.

"Yes, go on," she urges gently.

"The King would request," he says slowly, as if he practiced these words, perhaps repeated them back to Jon, "your presence at dinner. If'n you like."

Ghost comes to sit beside her, looking up at her with eyes that have a nearly preternatural glow and otherworldly intelligence. Jon sometimes dreams that he is Ghost as he sleeps—his confession occurred to her as the great beast curled into her side the night of Jon's victory over Aegon, and she whispered things into his white fur she wished she could say to Jon if he had not gone to his tent alone.

"Yes, of course," she says with a lightness she does not feel, directing her words more to the direwolf at her feet than Jon's jumpy squire.

She would never deny Jon her company, should he want it. Indeed, that he has not sought her out before this has been a source of concern, but if he wants her for her counsel, she doesn't know whether she is up to giving it. She feels as if her last advice to him has brought him nothing but grief, that he can take no satisfaction in the swell of his army, as men flock to his side, and the likelihood that King's Landing will open its gates to them.

"Dinner smells good," the boy adds, and Sansa raises her eyes to him to see him rub his flat stomach.

Jon doesn't eat better than his troops, but, perhaps with the intention of dining with her, he has had something special made. The little squire always gets a portion from the King's own table, so he stands to benefit as well. He is skinny enough that he could use a good meal. Her own clothes are beginning to fit somewhat loosely as the days since they left the Vale stretch out behind her and the number of mouths to feed grows instead of diminishing, but tonight she doesn't feel much like eating.

Nonetheless, she stands, meaning to change into a gown that's hem is somewhat less stained with mud or at least hides it somewhat better than this light grey woolen gown does before she seeks Jon's tent and provides him with whatever company or advice he might seek.

"Tell the King that I'll be along in a moment," she says, as she spares a tired smile for Jaime, though he will not meet her gaze and stares into the fire, the muscles in his jaw clenched, and then raises the flap of her tent, Ghost following at her heels.

…

She can tell that he was falling asleep at table, when she enters the tent, Ghost brushing her skirts, trotting over to the straw bed that has been made for him, by the way his head jerks.

"Jon," she says, coming towards him and motioning for him not to stand, though he does anyway, his fingertips pressed into the table as if that alone keeps him upright.

She looks up into his eyes and the circles there worry her. "Are you not sleeping?"

He doesn't respond, not aloud, but she feels his answer, as much as she felt his pain today. _How can I?_

She is struck by the most inappropriate urge to offer to stay with him tonight, to see if she might help him sleep, the way Ghost helps keep the nightmares at bay, when he sleeps in her bed, and as she feels her face begin to flush at the thought, he reaches up and smoothes her hair back. His eyes search hers for a moment and then turn to the table already set before them.

"I hope it hasn't gone cold."

"I'm sorry," she says, as she takes her seat opposite him. "I was told how good it smelled, and it does, but I wanted to change. I looked…well, you saw me earlier, I looked a fright," she babbles nervously.

There is a goblet of wine set beside her bowl, and she reaches for it, brings it to her lips, and swallows quickly.

She can only hope he doesn't think her a frivolous woman, worrying about her dress, when he is her brother and king and surely does not care for such things.

He watches her, his eyes dark in the dim light of the tent, as she replaces the goblet.

"You always look the same to me."

His voice is deepened by an unnamed emotion she feels echoing inside of her, and in her confusion she can't hold his gaze—this time it is she that looks away, fumbling for her spoon. She should taste this stew, which she can smell is venison and thick with barley, unions, and parsnips, although she has very little appetite. She brings the spoon to her mouth, and she can see that Jon still watches her, tearing off a chunk of his trencher in observant silence.

"You were quiet today, Sansa."

She swallows the warm stew, spiced well enough that her belly warms, and she's thankful for it, though she knows she won't finish half. It would be better for his little squire to have it.

"So were you."

"My squire tells me you're not feeling well."

She blinks. "He did?"

"The Kingslayer said something to him."

Sansa sighs. Jaime must have noticed that her cheerfulness was feigned, that the day of riding and council meetings had worn on her.

"I'm fine," she whispers, but she isn't really. As long as Jon is unwell, she is too.

He scratches at his beard, staring off as if the lie makes it difficult to look upon her. He is looking towards his camp bed, where she once tended him, and Sansa's gaze follows his. She hadn't felt his cut then. The thought of losing him brought her acute pain, but it wasn't as if she was burdened with his as well. "It wasn't like this before."

His brows knit together, when he asks, "Like what?"

"When you're in pain, Jon…I feel it. I know how deeply you're hurt by what you had to do." She presses her hand to her breast. "I _feel_ it."

Something inside of her has changed or she is more aware of it than before. Her dreams are more vivid too, and Jon is always there, holding his hand out to her.

"Your hands are cold," he says.

Though it is true and she regrets not having brought her gloves, Sansa doesn't know why he's said it. She glances down at her hand to see if it is tinged blue with the cold.

"I feel it too," he continues. "You think you should have worn your gloves."

Then perhaps it is not only Sansa that has changed. It doesn't startle her, this admission, the way it should, for she can feel it: the tug of his need for her, how his mind seems to reach out to her, drawing her closer. They barely need words, and as he lays his hand on the table, palm up, she finds a place to warm her hand. He is almost hot to the touch.

"Have you always been this warm?" she muses.

"No. I thought I'd die of the cold when I first got to the Wall. It was after."

After he was stabbed. After he was reborn. The whispers she's heard about his death and rebirth that mark him as the Prince. Now it feels as if fire burns in his blood, she thinks, drawing her thumb over the inside of his wrist. The need she feels pulsing between them changes at her touch, and Sansa draws a slow breath.

No, there is no need for words: she can feel what Jon thinks of her, how he sees her, and it is not as a sister. She is not instantly put off by the silent suggestion. That might be the most overwhelming discovery of all. Jon is a good man. She has been wanted by much worse. She might not even deserve such goodness, having certainly not earned it when she was cool to him as a girl.

She wonders if the signs were there all along; if she was merely blind to them in her desire to have her _brother_ back. But, no, surely there were things, incontrovertible moments, when he proved himself to be just a brother to her.

"You spoke someone's name," she blurts out, as her eyes skitter to Jon's bed once more. "In your fever," she adds quietly.

"Not yours?" he asks, and she can just see the small quirk of his lips.

She attempts to withdraw her hand, but he holds it fast.

"Yes, mine," she admits, "but someone else's too. A woman's."

"Ygritte."

Yes, that was the name.

"She was a wildling." His eyes go to her hair, draped over her shoulder, and he says, "She had red hair. They say it's good luck." She watches his Adam's apple roll above the neck of his black leather jerkin before he murmurs, "Not good enough though: she's dead now."

He doesn't know it, but this touches on one of her most deeply rooted insecurities: her fear that men only want to pretend she is someone else. That they only need to blow out the candle and cover her in darkness, so as to love her as another. But he doesn't know that Petyr made her pretend at being more than his daughter. He doesn't know that Jaime makes silent comparisons with his sister every time they are alone. That is her problem, not earnest Jon's, and she fights the painful flutter in her heart, fearful he will hear her thoughts.

As he shifts in his chair, she can sense his roil of distress and unease, and she feels sorry for having pressed the issue when he is already burdened as it is. She's glad there was some woman Jon could love. Truly. Or she will be eventually. She only wishes she hadn't been red of hair.

"Sansa, I…"

"It's all right, Jon," she interrupts softly. "I'm not a maid either."

He huffs, looking down at his untouched meal. "I hadn't meant for us to discuss this."

"Of course not. What did you want of me, Jon?"

"I need you," he says simply, but she already knows that, just as she knows she needs him, and should she lose him, she would be well and truly lost. "I'll be forced to fight yet more kin I've never met soon enough, and I need you as a reminder to me."

"Of what?"

"Of what I am. Of what I might stand to win."

"Oh, Jon," she says squeezing his hand. He doesn't need a throne to have her.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter Rating**: T  
><strong>Chapter Word Count<strong>: 2003  
><strong>Chapter Summary<strong>: He knows he is solemn and long faced and poor company for as lovely a young woman as Sansa has become. He is about to say as much, when she leans back to lie across his bed.  
><strong>Author's Note<strong>: I am currently grading the AP World History Exam, but I managed to deliver this tension filled chapter. And if you haven't joined the gameofships comm. On LJ, do so immediately! Our porn battle is underway, and there will be lots of fun shipping activities in the coming weeks.

* * *

><p>Chapter Eleven<p>

They are two days ride away from King's Landing, when Sansa slips into his tent without being announced, her feet silent on the frozen ground beneath them.

He looks up from the missive in his hands, his eyes grown weary from reading them over and over. King's Landing does not mean to let his army enter—they have grown weary of kings and their hungry, violent armies that rape and plunder and still offer no protection against the next army. Jon can understand the citizens' feelings, but of course he must secure the city before Daenerys does, and the towns that burn in her path grow ever closer with each passing day, which means he might need to attack the very city he intends to rule from. It is yet another in what seems to be an endless series of hopeless situations he would rather not face.

"I almost didn't hear you. You're as quiet as Ghost," he murmurs.

"I _am_ a shewolf," she says with just the hint of a smile. "Isn't that what your men say?"

He doesn't think his men would speak about the king's radiant sister within his hearing. As comely as she is, he doubts they waste time commenting on her house sigil. When his fist tightens, the parchment crinkles in his hand.

His eyes scan her briefly. She is not wearing a cloak, though the night is the coldest one he can remember since he left the North.

"It's late," he says, clearing his throat, delaying, trying to think of a way to tell her to go back to her own tent. It is difficult to form the words, when he is at war with himself, wanting her to stay and fearing it at the same time.

"Yes, it is, and yet, I could see the light of your lamp," she says, as she approaches and presses her hand to his shoulder to keep him from rising from his bed, where he has perched since he rejected his dinner, attempting to fight the urge to sink into it and close his eyes. "You should sleep, _Your Grace_."

It's a tease, calling him that when they are alone, a nod to the fact that she does not mean to be waylaid by anyone, least of all the king, from whatever purpose has brought her here. Jon can see that much. And as she takes the crumpled parchment from his hand, places it on the table beside the camp bed, and then smoothes her skirts to sit alongside him, he suspects she means to cajole him into sleep. There is a little line between her brows, an expression of concern, while she gazes into his face.

Jon pinches the bridge of his nose, where a dull pain lurks. "I don't know that I can."

"I'm afraid I can't sleep either. Ghost is hunting tonight, and I've grown accustomed to him being with me," she says, as she slips her hand into his, which lays palm up on his thigh—an unconscious invitation, for he has grown accustomed to having her close, feeling her next to him as he dreams as Ghost, and he longs for it when waking. "You're good to share him."

"He's no stupid beast, preferring your company to mine."

She knits their fingers together, hers so delicate between his rough, burned digits. "Shall we keep each other company in his absence then?"

He knows he is solemn and long faced and poor company for as lovely a young woman as Sansa has become. He is about to say as much, when she leans back to lie across his bed. When he looks over his shoulder at her, her hair splayed across the furs of his bed, sparkling with what he belatedly identifies as melting snowflakes, she smiles back at him and tugs on their joined hands, a wordless request that Jon is afraid to interpret.

"Jon," she says with a lilt to her voice, clearly reading his reluctance on his contorted face.

If he declines now, she will surely suspect what makes him disinclined to lie beside her, what thoughts rush through his head at the sight of her gracing his bed, how it makes him shift his seat, vainly attempting to relieve the tension building inside of him. She is no innocent maid, ignorant of the world and men, but he doubts she would come to him like this should she be privy to the depth of his want.

He lays back stiffly, his shoulder bumping hers, as he stares up at the tent above them. It blocks out the crescent moon and whatever bright stars might show through the banks of clouds that drop a blanket of snow, which slows their progress towards King's Landing and decorates her hair with diamonds.

"It's like when we were children. When we all climbed into bed together late at night, and you boys whispered so Nan wouldn't chance hear us being naughty."

For a moment Jon fails to think of what memory Sansa harkens back to. His memories of imprudent behavior—even as innocent as being awake long after he was put to bed—do not involve Sansa. At three years his junior, Sansa was not so little that she could not have partaken in their misadventures, but she was born a lady, above childish mischief, as far as Jon can remember, and she never had much time for him in particular, innocently echoing her lady mother's barely concealed aversion to his presence in her household.

"I don't recall. I can't recall," he confesses.

"No? I couldn't sleep, and Robb led me by the hand and helped me climb upon your bed."

He turns his head and their eyes meet. "How do you remember that?"

Sansa could not have counted more than three name days, when they were all discovered piled atop his bed the next morning, curled up where they had fallen asleep. He remembers now how she sat on his bed, pale legs akimbo with her thumb in her mouth—something she would not have done in the daylight even at that tender age—her hair in messy plaits, loose from tossing upon her pillow.

"Mother was laboring with Arya. I think I was frightened."

"You didn't understand."

Trying to explain to her what was happening would have been a better approach, but he and Robb barely knew themselves. Instead, they launched into a plot to steal something from the kitchens for her instead. Something sticky sweet. Lemoncakes. The plot had never come to fruition, however, as fatigue had taken them all at some point. Sansa first if he recalled correctly.

"It's the only memory I have from before she was born or of it just being us three."

When they were discovered the next morning, it was also the last night Robb and Jon spent in the nursery. Nan discovered them—a good thing, for Jon knew even then that Lady Stark would not have been pleased to find Robb and Sansa in his bed. She did not much like that Jon was kept with them at all. Too big for the nursery, his Lord Father proclaimed, but Jon wondered whether it was his fault they were banished. Whether if he had been a better boy, nothing would have changed.

"Arya squalled dreadfully as a babe. That might truly have been my last good night's sleep," she says with a small, hiccup like laugh, as she tucks her chin into his shoulder.

Jon does not have a wealth of memories of Sansa as a very small child. Maybe he was simply too young himself, but it was different with Arya, who looked just like him—dark hair, grey eyes, long face just like Lyanna, the both of them. Even as a child that meant something to Jon, feeling as if he did not truly belong. Robb seemed either vaguely disappointed in having yet another sister or disinterested at best, but Jon visited Arya in the nursery, made faces at her as she sat on the rug before the fire, held out toys to her while she learned to crawl. Arya was his _sister_.

"So, you see…we've shared a bed before."

As she speaks softly against his shoulder, it is almost as if he can feel her lips move against his skin, though there are several stiff, heavy layers preventing that kind of intimacy. It might only be the tone of her voice that causes the sensation. She sounds as if she is pleased to have discovered this shared moment from their childhood or to be able to relive it in some way with him here on his bed.

Her hand slips free of his and he very nearly chases it until he grasps why she has let him go. She rolls on her side, pulling one arm into her chest, fitting it between her breasts, as the other splays across him. Jon's jaw clenches as he feels the press of her against him—from her breast to her calf, as she hitches one knee slightly over him.

"Sansa," he says embarrassingly loudly. It was meant to be a warning of some sort, but he fears it only made him sound foolish.

His half-sister, Sansa, would have quirked a smile at that, would have turned to Jeyne Poole to bite her lip over her bastard brother's outburst. But Sansa, the woman he cannot think of as his sister though he has tried, runs her hand over his chest and shows no sign of amusement.

"I can't help but think of them. Even here, it feels more like home, doesn't it? With the snow?" _With you_, he supplies silently. "The air feels right. As if we might close our eyes and open them to see Winterfell."

Winterfell. The Kingslayer's words come back to him. Sansa wants to go home. She does not care for the game of thrones, anymore than he does, but he is the one to have committed to it. He could save her from his fate, however. He could see to it that she is safely ensconced in the halls of Winterfell, that she is recognized by all as Lady Stark. Even if she might be persuaded to choose him, does he have the right to keep her from her home, when that is quite clearly her first love?

He covers her wandering hand with his own. Both to acknowledge that he wants her here with him—she is home to him, she reminds him of who he was, of what he wants to be—and to cease her gentle movements, which are causing him no small amount of inner conflict.

He might roll atop her. Tell her that he wants her. That she is beautiful. That the smell of her hair and the blue of her eyes make him want to strip this gown off of her. That he wants to taste her lips, taste between her legs. That he wants her to shake with pleasure and forget her pain if only for a space.

That he loves her.

"It's all right, Jon," she soothes, and he realizes she must feel the thunder of his heart beneath her palm. "We're not alone anymore."

…

Jon wakes, his eyes focusing on the canvas above him that lifts with the winter wind and falls back against the wooden supports with a sharp slapping sound. Blinking, he scrubs his face, and notes that there are very little sounds stirring yet in the camp—still early yet. It is only as he realizes that he feels better rested than he has in countless moons that he turns his head to the side to see if she is there beside him. It is a strange rush of relief and disappointment when he sees the empty, indented pillow. His scarred hand reaches out to smooth away where her head rested.

He can't yet think of whether he should ask her to be there beside him always. Not yet.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter Rating**: T  
><strong>Chapter Word Count<strong>: 2780  
><strong>Chapter Summary<strong>: "Let me take you east. Leave them to kill each other and I'll bring you back in the spring. I'll take you home, Sansa."  
><strong>Author's Note<strong>: I have been travelling internationally, but I promise updates will be more regular now that I'm back. I love my readers.

* * *

><p>Chapter Twelve<p>

They will be outside of the walls of King's Landing tomorrow, and knowing what she has chosen, Sansa rode all day silently within sight of Jaime. Words escaped her, since she could not make herself tell him her plans, for fear of how he might react. At the conclusion of a long day, however, after the council finished its last meeting before reaching the city that refuses to accept Jon as king without a fight, Sansa winds her way through the noisy camp, seeking out Jaime's tent, her feet crunching through the layer of frost that has formed on the snow. She can avoid speaking with him no longer, for it would be unfair to keep silent. Yet, when she finds his tent, she stands there, her hand hovering at the flap. Finally, she steels herself to call his name, half expecting him to taunt her for having come to him alone like this, when the sun dipped below the horizon hours earlier.

"Ser Jaime?"

She can hear him say something from inside. His words are muffled by the canvas, but she takes them for permission to enter and pulls back the flap.

"Forgive me," she begins as a mode of courtesy that she knows he finds unnecessary.

Just in case he isn't decent, in case she has misunderstood, she keeps her eyes schooled on the ground until she sees him gesture to her. He uncrosses his arms from his chest to wave her comment away as if to prove her supposition correct—they are beyond meaningless courtesies and she is welcome here though the hour is late. Nonetheless, he is not entirely presentable: his tanned leather jerkin is unlatched and open, and his tunic is pulled free of his breeches, as he sits slouched in a camp chair with his feet propped on table before him.

"Can I offer you something to drink, my lady?" he asks in an exaggerated mockery of chivalry, as he nods towards the wineskin that is perched on the sliver of space on the table not crowded out by his heavy boots.

His camp chair and table are not so stable or substantial that Sansa thinks his precarious position is entirely safe, but Jaime very rarely sits a chair properly. He must insist on lounging even in situations when a bit of decorum would certainly be welcomed.

"Just how much wine is left, ser?" she asks, a little leery of the prospect of him being drunk for this conversation.

His pupils are great black pools in the diffuse light of the tent. "Not much."

"It's well and good that I'm not thirsty then, I suppose. But, thank you," she says evenly, though she is certain that he is far from sober, and the thought makes her stomach flip.

"Either come inside or go. It's bloody freezing," he snarls, and she realizes that she is still holding the tent flap.

She lets it fall closed behind her but moves no further inside the tent. Indeed, she stands as far away from him as she can in the small space. She will need this space to gather her courage. All she can think is that the morning would be a better time to speak with him, when he stands a better chance of being sober, but the timing would be cruel, hours away from King's Landing.

Like quicksilver, Jaime's mood switches from irritation to seeming carelessness, drunkenness making him unpredictable, as he observes offhandedly, "The war council met for some time today."

"Yes," Sansa says, clasping her hands before her.

"After a long day's ride that doesn't leave you much time to rest that pretty head of yours."

"You lie charmingly ser. I gave up on trying to appear presentable some time ago," she says, attempting to match his feigned levity. "Besides, there's much to discuss. Daenerys is advancing on King's Landing with her army of Unsullied and dragons, and King's Landing means to bar Jon's entrance to the city."

"Yes, it seems to be shaping up to be a grand battle between three dragons and a direwolf," Jaime says with a smirk. "Sounds like a good way to get yourself killed."

He's right of course: with every step they take towards what might stand to be the last battle, she is closer to her death, and yet, she knows without a doubt that she will not send Jon on alone. She will never desert him.

"If that is the case, Jon will need me with him more than ever."

"It won't just be knights and blades and arrows this time, and he won't be able to end what's coming in single combat. They don't call her the Dragon Queen for nothing, Sansa. They're very real—their skulls used to decorate the Red Keep."

"Do you mean to frighten me with tales of horror?"

"You should be frightened: burning is a bad way to go," Jaime says, as he pulls his feet off of the table and lets his boots hit the packed ground with a thud.

Sansa suppresses a shudder. Something about the noise startles her, something about his warning sets her teeth on edge. She has lived through a great many things. Dark things. But dragons? That she has yet to see, and her curiosity about the winged beasts does not outweigh her terror.

She speaks with cool determination, presenting a front of courage she knows she will need to don like a cloak as Lady Stark when the king faces his foes. "I'm sure it is."

She has not seen them, none of Jon's army has yet seen the creatures, but word has reached their ears of the fate of those who lay in Daenerys' path. Of the bodies unrecognizable to their families. Of villages and towns left scorched piles of rubble.

"But you mean to follow him anyway," Jaime says, standing and closing the distance between them in too few steps.

"Yes," she says so softly that he must lean in to hear her. At least, that is what she tells herself as she feels his breath warm against her cheeks, chilled from the cold.

"What compels you to do something so lethally foolish?" he asks, his voice low, the dangerous purr of a lion.

She swallows. She could tell him that it is none of his business—it would certainly be easier—but this is why she has come to him. She owes him an answer. He was the first person to come to her aid and want nothing in return, he came for her, stayed with her, promised her what she wanted most.

"Love."

Her whispered answer almost dies on her lips, when he reaches up to trace her cheek with the roughened tips of his fingers.

"You're in love with him?"

"I…" she begins but can't manage to finish.

She's not entirely sure. She's been a wife and plaything, but she's never been in love before, and it is confusing to sort through her feelings while attempting to accept him as a Targaryen, as something other than her brother, when she wants him to be a Stark, wants him to be family. Confusing to dream about his lips on hers, when she looks at his face and he is so strikingly familiar. But she knows he is a man she could trust with her love.

"I can't argue with that," Jaime says, and Sansa can hear the regret give each word its tangible weight. "It's complete madness, but that's what love does to you."

"Don't say that," Sansa whispers.

It reminds her of his sister's dire warnings, and sends a chill creeping across her scalp.

"Shall I tell you what I think?" he asks, pressing his forehead to hers. "Let me take you east. Leave them to kill each other and I'll bring you back in the spring. I'll take you home, Sansa."

Her eyes close for a moment, as she imagines that future. It is the future to which she clung, when it was just she and he in the Vale. Opening them again, she lets that dream go.

"I know you would." She has been certain for many, many moons that he would fulfill his vow, and she is supremely grateful for his faithfulness and supremely grateful for the hope that dream gave her when she had very little hope to cling to.

He narrows his eyes. "But you won't. That's it, isn't it?"

This is what she came to tell him, but still the words won't come. Her lips press together as if to keep the words from escaping.

He pulls back slightly, the muscles in his jaw working. "Of course he wants you at his side. You're easy to love, and I didn't think it could be that way."

As he speaks, his eyes look past her to some distant spot. He's not really seeing her, he's thinking of someone else. His thoughts might be with his sister, but it seems as if he's confessing something. What that something might be makes her heart beat too quick, and she considers stepping back and gaining some distance from him. So that she can't smell the wine on his breath or the leather of his jerkin.

But then he looks at her, truly focuses on her and sees just her. His green eyes light fiercely and she feels his hand slip into her hair, tangling at the base of her skull. She makes a noise in the back of her throat, as his lips capture hers. Hard—much harder than Petyr's measured kisses—with his hand holding her fast against him, against his solid chest, his muscled thighs. His lips are insistent, his teeth bruising, and she's swept along without consciously deciding to allow it. Somehow she knew this is how it would be. Before the War of Dragons ever came to the Vale, she blushed crimson in the privacy of her room, thinking on how Jaime Lannister sometimes looked at her as if he knew her worth, how he might devour her if she gave him a sign.

Then his hand is gone, and he is already stepping back from her, his nostrils flared. "Much too easy," he mutters, as he crosses his arms over his chest.

She bites her lower lip, realizing that she can't even taste him there. His kiss felt so fierce, but there is no real proof that he ever kissed her. She would slap him for his insolence, but how can one rightly punish something that barely has had time to bloom? There is a strange kinship between them born of being two lost souls, she can trust him, for he is unquestionably loyal to her, and he amuses her, which in another world might have been enough. It almost _is_ enough even in this world. She could lose herself in his easy smiles, his irreverence, and his fierce need to protect. There is such intensity about him, lurking beneath his careless manner. To be the focus of that intensity would surely be intoxicating.

She believes that she understands Jaime the way others cannot, however, and that is why she knows that whatever is between them, it can never go beyond this. Cersei lies between them, and she always will. She's here in this tent with them even now, while he makes silent note of the points of similarity and difference between his golden twin and herself, while he imagines what venom Cersei would spew should she know of their kiss.

"I should warn you, as your elder, that it isn't always so easy. I've done a deal of terrible things for love," he says with arched brows.

He looks amused with himself, and though it is an act, though she knows he uses it to throw a veil over his pain, his words make her angry. The vague feeling of regret that lingers from his kiss, the curiosity for what might have been, paired with his meanness makes her explode in a way she has schooled herself to avoid.

"What is so terrible about my love for Jon? My wanting to follow him? You would equate _your_ crimes with my desire to be with him?"

His eyes leisurely rake over her. "No, I think it a terrible waste if you sacrifice yourself on the altar of this war, so that Jon Snow can claim a throne. When I came here, you were tired of the game of thrones, and now off you march."

"I have every intention of living," she says with a slight lift of her chin. "And Jon doesn't fight for power or a throne he would rather not have. I am not a sacrificial victim to some unworthy cause, some petty squabble. He has had leadership thrust upon him, and you best hope he wins. He will save us all."

Jaime chuckles, as he stares down at the ground. "That's very touching, Sansa, that after everything you still believe in heroes. I can't say that I do."

She hadn't thought she did either. She was certain that there were no heroes in this world. "I believe in Jon."

"I hope for your sake that you're right."

I am, she thinks. She knows in her heart that Jon must be king.

"But live or die, you won't ever be returning to Winterfell, will you?" he asks, cocking his brow and settling into his hip. "What has become of your wish to go home?"

Since she saw Jon that first day on the battlefield, the truth has been somewhere inside her waiting to be discovered. The silent shell of Winterfell to the north is no longer her home, not truly: Jon is her home. He is all she has left.

"Jon means more," she simply says, for she mustn't tell Jaime before she has told Jon. Jaime and the trust she places in him cannot be what stands between her and Jon the way Cersei stands immaterial here.

He nods. "Then you have no need for your one handed escort."

This is what she has feared: he means to leave her. He is almost within arm's reach, and Sansa goes to grab his arm, but he turns away, maneuvering far enough away that she would have to lunge. He must know that she won't. It would be undignified, unbecoming of Lady Stark. Her lady mother would scowl at the thought of her daughter grasping at the Kingslayer, trying desperately to keep him near.

Of course, she would hate the idea of the bastard Jon Snow always at her daughter's side as well. But her lady mother was wrong about Jon.

"There is _always_ a place for a good man," she says somewhat weakly instead, hoping rather than believing it might convince him to stay.

"I'm not a good man, Sansa, and if you have no real need of me, then I would ask to be released from my vow."

The flesh on her arms prickles beneath her woolen gown. She knows that Jaime's vow has given him purpose, has kept him alive, when he would rather have given up. If she begged him to stay, went to her knees before him, he might, but to keep him as a chained lion seems equally impossible.

"You've always been free to go," she says, willing him to turn around, so she might look him in the face and assure herself that he doesn't mean to do anything drastic. Not because of her.

"I'll go the rest of the way to King's Landing and stay until it's taken, so long as I am given access to the Red Keep's dungeons."

Of course. Jaime would not hurl himself off a rock into churning oceans for her, because whatever it is between them is good and simple. But she knows he would do something dark for the love of Cersei that long ago became so twisted that it is as much hate as affection.

It reached their ears some moons ago that Aegon locked Cersei Lannister in the dungeons, and Sansa suspects what it is he intends to do when he finds her. Jaime cast Cersei aside and sought Sansa so that he might safely escort her to the North in a quest to right wrongs, to rewrite his reputation, so that he might be considered an honorable man. You already are, Sansa wants to say, but the words catch in her throat.

Without his quest, there is only one thing tying him to this world, one ghost haunting his dreams, and Sansa knows better than most that some exorcisms must be carried out by one's own hand.

"I'll speak to Jon."


	13. Chapter 13

**Rating**: T  
><strong>Chapter Word Count<strong>: 2825  
><strong>Chapter Summary<strong>: Sansa seems to think that Jaime Lannister will not be with them much longer now that they are at the gates of King's Landing. Jon can't bring himself to hope for that much.  
><strong>Author's Note<strong>: I should prostrate myself on the floor for there being a month between updates on this. Mea culpa, my faithful readers. I shall endeavor to be better.

Chapter Thirteen

They can smell the smoke before they can ever see the flames rising around the walls of King's Landing. Jon's hopes that the desperate messages they've received refusing him entry into the city were merely bluster fade as they're enveloped by an acrid smell.

Sansa, who has ridden at his side all morning, is the one of the few people not gaping at him as if he should immediately have the answer to this puzzling scene, as if he should solve it with a wave of his sword. She looks from the flames, which for once make her hair seem not so fiery by comparison, to him and there is shock in her blue eyes, but she makes no silent demands of him as her gaze meets his.

Asha Greyjoy is another, and he finds himself deeply grateful for these two very different women's presence here. They still think of him as human, and that's becoming a rarity.

Asha pulls up alongside him, her eyes narrowed at the strange sight before her—orange flames encircling a portion of the walls of the city they have pressed hard to reach. The flames dance, consuming the space around them, growing ever bigger as they lick up the stone walls.

"They've set fire to their own bloody city."

Sansa shakes her head. "_Why_ would they do that?"

A man with knotted hanks of black hair—a wildling that followed him from the North—to Sansa's right barks out between his own laughter, "Kneelers are mad. That's why. Should have never come South."

From his position he can't see the looks that Asha and Sansa direct at the man, but he seems cowed immediately. They're both fearsome creatures in their own ways, and he'd hate to have their combined displeasure directed at him.

"It _is_ madness," Sansa says with a sigh. "Madder than you might suspect."

The way she stares at the flames with her eyes wide and her lips pressed tight, Jon can see that she knows something. Although none of them are remotely at ease, she is more concerned than any of the rest of them.

"How does it get madder than setting fire to your own city?" Asha asks, as her tired black mount snorts and a shiver runs down his flanks.

"There's wildfire kept within the city. There must be. They used it in the Battle of the Blackwater. I could see the green flames from my window. There have to be stores of it somewhere."

Jon's steed wants either to press forward or to swing away from this scene, as if he can sense the anxiety that grows amongst the men as the king fails to give an order in response to this crisis. Or perhaps he senses the growing anxiety of his rider, the anxiety Jon does his best to keep hidden, but which Sansa can no doubt feel rebounding inside her chest like an echo. Jon pulls the reins in tight, stilling the beast.

"Whoa," he commands before giving his attention to Sansa. "What's this, my lady?"

"Wildfire. If the stores of it catch flame, the whole city will burn—the buildings, the people. It will consume everything, and I doubt the smallfolk know where it's kept or understand just how volatile it can be. They don't know what they're about."

Asha pats the neck of her horse, which much like Jon's is beginning to twitch and prance. Only Sansa's placid mount, one which he knows the Kingslayer personally selected for her, behaves as if it is untouched by the threat of the flames. He can't truly resent the attention Jaime pays her, when it might preserve Sansa's safety in these moments when another horse would spook, and besides, Sansa seems to think that Jaime Lannister will not be with them much longer now that they are at the gates of King's Landing. Jon can't bring himself to hope for that much.

Asha scowls. "It just keeps getting better. Even if they don't know about the wildfire waiting to burn them alive, what would possess them to set fire to the walls?"

"They've seen our approach and mean to keep us out, as promised."

"That's a tactic I must be unfamiliar with, Snow."

Jon points, indicating with his black gloved hand something along the walls that his scouts informed him of a few minutes earlier. "They've dumped oil around the outside of the walls and set fire to it. They must hope to keep us back, to try to prevent our approach with siege equipment. There may be precious few people actually left to defend the walls."

"It's desperation more than stupidity," Sansa says, as she pushes her fur hood back. Jon suspects she is right and that this is the work of men that know nothing about siege warfare. "The Gold Cloaks have probably all fled. They're always in the pocket of someone and if that someone died, there would be little reason to stay and fight."

Sansa knows a great deal about King's Landing politics. That much has become clear in the past few days in council. He welcomes her invaluable assistance, and can only regret that she learned her lessons in so terrible a manner and under such tutelage as Petyr Baelish—a man he never met and yet hates all the same. The Lannisters and Little Finger stole so much from Sansa, so much from them both.

"If that's the case, then they may have left before Aegon ever took the city," Jon suggests.

"Yes."

"Leaving bakers and cobblers to defend it from the next approaching army. What cowardice," Asha says through gritted teeth. "I'm glad to be ironborn."

"Someone needs to alert them to the danger," Jon says with a grimace. "And tell them we mean no harm, to reassure them once more that King's Landing will not be sacked by my troops."

Jon has issued strict orders to his troops about the tenor of this battle if one does chance to ensue. These are the people he means to rule, to protect from Daenerys' dragons and Unsullied, and he does not want to begin his rule here with rape and plunder. They would be right to bar his entry if he planned otherwise. He has no wish to be a conqueror unless it is a conqueror of the terrors that stalk the North, threatening them all as winter's icy fingers stretch ever further south.

"Someone get me a white banner," Jon shouts, and Sansa cranes her neck around to fix him with a wild look.

It is unusual to see her careful mask disposed of in company, and he wishes he could take the time to reassure her, but there is precious little time for anything if what she says is true about wildfire. He sees her mouth it—_no_—but he only hears the sound in his head, for nothing but horse's hooves and the shouts of men carry across the air between them. It is no surprise that Sansa would like someone else to ride towards the walls, but he can't let anyone else represent him in this if King's Landing is to be his capital. It will show them all what sort of king he means to be.

He looks around, as men scramble to follow his directive, and this time he hears her sharp clear voice. "Jon. No. Don't, Jon."

"It will be all right, my lady."

It is all he can offer her surrounded by company, and he knows it is not enough.

Asha chuckles. "He survived a stabbing, Lady Sansa. I doubt a little campfire blaze will do him any real harm."

"You have too much trust in his invulnerability," Sansa bites back.

"I'm just trusting to the fact that even an unscaled dragon can't burn."

The way Sansa purses her lips, he can see that she still doesn't know whether he is a dragon. He supposes they'll all find out soon enough.

…

Jaime reins in his horse, as Sansa stands there still staring blankly into the flames she can see dancing around the walls of the city. Jon's men are working with snow and sand to put it out, but it continues stubbornly to burn. All she can think of is the fire from the breath of dragons that still awaits them, how the whole city might be shortly alit with green flames, once their burning breath ignites the wildfire she knows is stored somewhere deep within.

He dismounts, holding the reins tight until he can gain the attention of a wildling boy, who is as frozen by the flames as she is. Or perhaps the sight of King's Landing sprawling before them is what holds him fast. As strange as the wilds north of the Wall would be to her, Northern though she is, she imagines to a young Wildling, King's Landing is a sight unparalleled.

It does not look exactly as it did when last she was here. Portions of the city look in ruins even from this distance, where she has been stashed until the all clear is sounded. Aegon's conquest of the city left it scarred.

"Hold him," Jaime commands, as he shoves the reins into the boy's bare hands. "Hold him tight."

The horse stamps his feet and throws his head, and Sansa can see the whites of the animal's eyes.

"It doesn't like the flames," she says without feeling.

"They'll have them out soon enough," he assures her briskly, although he spares one look over his shoulder to see if the boy is following his directive to hold tight.

"Your king didn't burn. That makes him a dragon, doesn't it?"

"Yes, I suppose it does," she says softly.

He clears his throat. "Are you pleased?"

"That he didn't burn alive?"

Jaime tilts his head down, looking over his nose at her, as if she is being purposefully dim. Perhaps she is. But she doesn't know whether she is truly pleased to find that Jon is a Targaryen, that the blood of the dragon flows in his veins. She almost thinks it doesn't matter to her anymore. How she feels about him is unrelated to his blood. The past they share is unchanged and her heart does not seem much inclined to worry itself about parentage.

"It's for the best, I suppose," she says noncommittally.

"Where is he now?"

Jaime does not usually concern himself with Jon's affairs. He has been one of the only people on this march who were uninterested in Jon's claim or his victories and losses.

"Inside the walls somewhere. Jon's forces must make certain the Red Keep is secure before I follow."

"They let him enter without firing one arrow." Who would not after the display he made, a man in armor walking unharmed through fire? Even Jon's own army seemed buoyed by fresh conviction, the men around her lit with the fire of certainty that they have chosen the right man, that the prophecy speaks of Jon Snow and Jon Snow only. "The difficult part is over. The city is secure."

Of course that is what matters to Jaime. That was his promise to her—to stay until King's Landing is taken.

She nods at his assurance, but she won't feel secure until she is safely at Jon's side once more and can see him unburnt or otherwise harmed. It will take everything in her not to fawn over Jon, when she is reunited with him. Every bit of restraint to keep from running her hands over him until she is convinced that he is untouched. It would be improper for her to treat the king as if he is a child, who has narrowly escaped harm. A child or a lover. But the sight of his form disappearing into the flames is forever etched upon the backs of her eyelids, she sees him there when she closes her eyes, and it makes her heart pound.

Her urge to soothe hurts is strong, and it is why she has been as gentle with Jaime Lannister, who looks back at her now with some great unhappiness marring his face, pulling it down about the edges, making him look weary and older than he ought, as she has. He is a broken man, and she cannot help but want to heal him. That is not the same as love, however. It might be a place to start, but their story is ending, not beginning. That hurts too, though she almost wishes it did not. There is too much pain, too much confusion for her to sort through as she stares at the city she hoped to never see again.

Jaime scrubs his face, considering her for a moment before he speaks again. "I thought I could save you."

She knows how much it means to Jaime to grasp onto the possibility that he could be a true knight, that he could live up to the songs she suspects he admired as a child as much as she did.

"You did."

His laugh is a harsh bark, and she thinks not for the first time that he doesn't truly believe that he could be a good man. He is wrong. Sansa might be the only one in the world to believe it, but she knows he is wrong. Jaime Lannister is capable of goodness just as he is capable of terrible things. Much like herself.

"You're on the edge of unspeakable terrors awaiting all of you in this forsaken city with Daenerys Stormborn approaching. I would hardly say I accomplished much of anything other than expanding your vocabulary. You might converse more plainly with sailors should the need arise."

He is rough and sarcastic, but she sees the real alarm for her safety behind his posturing. He has his own path now, but he is still burdened by something. Not his vow, perhaps, for she has released him from that. Something more natural tethers him to her.

"Don't worry about me, Jaime. Who better to keep company with than a dragon when the world goes up in flames?" she asks, trying to smile and faltering.

Her hand goes out to smooth the cloak he wears—crimson red, which is enough to make him stand out amongst the sea of black and grey that makes up most of Jon's troops.

She knows this is the moment: he has come to check on her one last time. She would like to lie to herself—she is good at deception—and tell herself that he only means to find Cersei, free her, and escape to the east. As much as she hates Cersei, Sansa would sleep better knowing that Jaime is alive in the world, striving to be better. But she knows this will be the last time in this life she will ever look upon his handsome face, which already seems darkened by the grief of what awaits him.

She doesn't want to allow him to go without letting him know what he has meant to her, how she feels about him, even if telling him is selfish. Even if it is nothing more than a desperate attempt to prevent him from carrying out his task. She is weary of loss. Surely he understands that and will take pity on her.

"Jaime, I," she begins to confess, but he reaches up and chucks her under the chin—a sweet, affectionate gesture he first attempted when he found her sitting alone with Petyr's three day old corpse—and she stops short.

"Don't say it. Whatever it is, I like you better for not saying it." Sansa frowns, but he continues, "Your Jon Snow will be better deserving of whatever sweet words you might bestow upon him."

The comparison brings a rush of heat to her cheeks and she casts her eyes to the ground to avoid his piercing gaze. She cannot escape him, however. He grabs her arm and pulls her against his chest, so that his mouth is at her ear.

"Insist on being his queen," he whispers fiercely. Sansa struggles against his grip, but he holds her fast, pressing bruises into her arm through the wool of her sleeve. "They'll tell him to marry the Dragon Bitch to end this, and if you allow it, it will twist both of you into something ugly. Do you hear me?" he asks, giving her a shake.

She nods slowly, his lips brushing against her as she moves.

His grip relaxes as his mouth presses hard against her ear, a warm, hot kiss that makes her lean into him.

_Maybe he won't leave. Maybe…_

She can hear him draw breath, ragged and shuddering, before he murmurs, "Wars are a nasty business, my sweet, but the price we pay to end them can be just as poisonous."

Her fingers search for purchase on his leather jerkin even as he's slipping away.

He says no goodbye.


	14. Chapter 14

**Rating**: T  
><strong>Chapter Word Count<strong>: 4298  
><strong>Chapter Summary<strong>: Jaime's wandered dank, dark hallways that smell of rot and mold, looking for a woman that no longer exists. It's a stranger that he looks down at now.  
><strong>Author's Note<strong>: An update that was long in coming. But! It is quite possibly the longest chapter thus far? Summary doesn't quite cover all that happens. It's a rollercoaster. Hold on...

* * *

><p>Chapter Fourteen<p>

Jaime's wandered dank, dark hallways that smell of rot and mold, looking for a woman that no longer exists. It's a stranger that he looks down at now. Cersei is a shell of her former self. Her once golden hair is thin, hacked off at her shoulders, and matted. Her skin is devoid of color other than the bloody scabs that mark her arms. Her face so sunken in that the bones in her cheeks stand out as sharp as knives, and her once flashing eyes are dull, barely green amongst the yellow, as she stares blankly up at him.

Jaime is unsure whether the shocking differences in her make his task easier or not. What he intends to do might be a mercy. She seems so lifeless that he can't even tell if she recognizes him. This is no sort of existence. He certainly doesn't feel the rage he expected to, when he kneels down beside her. It's like looking at a wounded animal caught in a trap—pitiful and in need of being put out of its misery.

"Cersei, it's me."

Her eyes finally seem to focus, as she licks her chapped lips. "You're late."

So she knows him. Jaime should have known better than to discount Cersei and her ability to lash out even if she looks half dead.

He tilts his head and exhales heavily. "You're wrong on that count. I'm early, considering I never planned on coming at all."

"Liar."

She smiles and it lacks any beauty, even cruel beauty. Then again, it would be asking the impossible to make a smile that causes blood to well up through cracked lips seem beautiful.

"Let's not call names, Cersei." He has a list of names he thought perhaps he would spit at her if ever given the chance, but he lacks the desire now. She's not herself, so it's no surprise that he feels empty, hollowed out, as if life and all its accompanying rage has departed him already. "We'll be here all day if we begin playing at that game."

She shifts against the dungeon wall, her chains around her wrists clinking as they brush the stone floor. Her wrists look skinny enough that she might be able to pull her hands free of her restraints if she had the energy to break a bone or two in her hands. There's no telling the last time someone thought to bring her anything to eat. She's a living skeleton.

"Where have you been?" she demands.

He thinks of Sansa as he saw her last, hair buffeted by the wind, cheeks flushed with the cold. The contrast between Sansa's bloom of youth and his sister's shrunken shell could not be starker. "You wouldn't like it if I told you."

She turns her head, staring off in that unfocused way again. "I hope it was worth it then, because you're too late for Tommen."

"Yes." Not that he could have defeated Aegon's army and saved his son, but she's right: he is much too late to save Tommen. Just as he failed to ensure Sansa's safety. His career as a hero has been a vast failure. "My lack of a hand has made me quite useless. Isn't that right?"

He holds it up, puts it before her face, so she has to see it.

"You were useless long before that." Her tone is completely flat and unaffected by his demonstration, though she turns her face from his golden hand just as she did so many moons ago. "None of this would have happened if I had been born a boy."

Jaime doesn't think Cersei would have made as good a king as she likes to imagine. Genna was right: Tyrion was always the one with all the skill at political maneuvering, their father's true son.

"If you'd been born with a cock we wouldn't have spent as much time fucking, my tastes being a little less flexible than yours."

The roll of her eyes looks strange in a face so devoid of life. "_You_ could afford to be faithful. I made do with what I had to work with, Jaime. You'd understand if you were a woman."

He's familiar with Cersei's lectures on the limitations of female power. He's even heard Sansa parrot them back in her darker moods, but it is Sansa who makes him think perhaps his sister was wrong on some points. If Jon Snow should win, he can envision a future with a powerful and good woman guiding Westeros' future without having to compromise herself in any way. He will not live to see that future, however.

"And you're nearly too late for me. I can't walk out of here."

His sister is perhaps more visibly changed than he is, but they are both of a past era, one they helped bring about and one he must now help end. That's the only thing he can do to end both their pain, and the only thing he can do to assist in bringing about Sansa's more hopeful future.

Jaime stretches out his remaining hand, slipping it into her hair. He pulls her close until they share the same air, the way they once shared everything, pressed together as they must have been in the womb before the world began to tear them apart bit by bit until they were a mess of blood and bone.

"I'm afraid that doesn't matter, sweet sister. Neither of us will be walking out of here."

…

It is late. Or exceptionally early. Whatever the time, Jon shouldn't be here. The demonstration at the city gates today has amply proven again that he is not her brother, and his presence in her rooms at this uncommon hour could draw cruel comment. But he had to come. He is drawn to her, pulled like the moon pulls at the waves.

When he knocks and the door cracks open, the room is in shadow, lit only by the dripping tallow candlestick Sansa holds in her hand. His eyes dart to her almost diaphanous bed gown, which slips off her shoulder, exposing the lily white of her skin. It is really very late, but she beckons him in, holding the door open wider so that he and Ghost might enter. The door has barely shut behind him when she places the candle on the walnut high board and reaches up with both hands to cup his cheeks.

She speaks his name, as she draws her thumbs over his cheeks, and his reaction is uncomfortable and uncontrollable. It's the way she's said it—on a relieved exhale that makes him think of other contexts where she might call out his name, of what he might do to elicit such cries. She says it again, as she drags her fingers through his hair and pulls him down closer. He squeezes his eyes closed, fighting off the desire to have her scratch her nails over his scalp or tug on his curls.

"You're unharmed? Unburnt?" she asks, as she once more traces his features as if for reassurance.

He swallows thickly. "I'm unhurt."

"Thank the gods," she sighs, kissing his cheeks, his brow, and Jon stands with his hands gripping his belt, so that he doesn't draw her into his chest and press his mouth hungrily against hers. "I saw it, I saw you walk right through the flames, but…I couldn't be sure."

He takes her elbows in hand and stills her movements. "Are you sure now?" He curses the question and the tone in which he has said it, for he doesn't speak of his safety and it isn't right to press her on such things. It's from her touch, he thinks, as he releases his hold on her: it makes him too unguarded.

"Always." Her blue eyes flick over him and there's a flush on her cheeks. Perhaps from the cold. "But, no more heroics, for my sake, Jon. At least for a few days."

He doesn't make any promises. Queen Daenerys could be at their door in a matter of days, and there is no telling what sort of dangers they will all face then.

"I've awoken you and it's cold."

"I couldn't sleep," she says as she moves to a chair, where a discarded silken wrap lies draped over the back and pulls it about her shoulders.

It can't do much to keep her warm, but it's better that she's covered. Far better that he can't trace the slope of her neck down over her shoulder with his eyes, with his gloveless hand.

"And you look exhausted." When she looks worriedly at him like this, he can't help but think of Lady Stark and how she sometimes looked at her children and her lord husband, when worry creased her brow. Only, she never looked at him in that way, not like Sansa does. "Come, sit down."

He nods his thanks, and they sit opposite each other, a rounded table between them. The space is not very far, not insurmountable, and every adjustment she makes to her wrap draws his eye; he flattens his hands against the smooth wood of the table so as to cease their twitching, driven by a need to adjust it for her or remove it entirely. Perhaps it was unwise to come to her when he is this tired and his self control is compromised, for she is right, he is exhausted. With exhaustion making his limbs feel leaden, the only comfort he would seek now would be sleep or her arms, and the latter is not his to take.

Her gentle tenor makes it clear that at least his thoughts are well enough hidden from her. "Tell me how it went. Did the men follow your orders?"

"As far as I know, yes. There will be further inquiries and any necessary restitution made tomorrow."

Something always goes wrong. It is human nature to act badly, when given the chance, but it was not the bloodbath that it could have been. It was very nearly bloodless. There were only a few people within these walls that resisted at all. Most having seen or heard of his fire walk yielded without a fight. They all know that another dragon awaits them, however, and the city is eerily quiet.

"They listen to you, Jon."

The look that lights her beautiful face—it's like admiration and pride and affection—is such a sweet pleasure that to have her think well of him should be enough. He shouldn't also think of kissing those lips, of gazing up into her face from between her legs.

Clearing his throat, he forces himself to stop gaping at her. "Is everything all right here? Are you comfortable?"

In the darkness, he can't make out many details of the room other than the looming bed with its towering carved frame. His instructions were for her to be placed in one of the rooms that were undamaged during Aegon's siege and given whatever she might need as soon as she requested it.

She toys with the fine fringe on her wrap, and she looks for just a moment like the young girl he once knew, only stripped of Sansa's bubbling hubris that life would always be good. That confidence sometimes made her unintentionally cruel, but she has come about her maturity and kindness via a difficult path.

"As much as I can be. But you needn't worry about my comfort."

"I can't help but worry." His thoughts have been with her more than they should be. That seems to be a constant now, as much a fact of his existence as his need for food, drink, and sleep.

She gives a little shake of her head, making the long, loose braid swing behind her back. "A king has more important concerns."

She _is_ his most important concern. It is just that his duties pull him away from her more than he would like and the hours pass interminably in her absence.

"I'm sorry to have come so late."

"Don't concern yourself about the hour. It will take me some time to fall asleep tonight."

As if on cue, Ghost, who has stood silent at his side, lopes over to her bed and easily bounds up. Jon frowns at him, the ill behaved beast, but he can't blame him. Jon wants to be in her bed as much as Ghost does. Only Ghost will bring her more comfort than he could. It is not his general practice, but Jon might end up taking more than he gives. Should he ever get the chance, he would like to take a different tack with Sansa. Much different.

Still his mind wanders, when he should be more cognizant of the things she has seen here, the things that were done to her. Jon can't begin to imagine what she must feel like being here once more.

"I'm sorry to have brought you back here. I wish it could be different."

In his weakest moments he dreams of Winterfell. Cracked, crumbling Winterfell with Sansa at his side and the world dying all around them. It isn't the nightmare it should be. Not with Sansa's red hair scattered over his pillow and her hand fast in his.

Sansa looks towards the window, through which the crescent moon shines its faint light. "Stop apologizing. I came of my own accord."

They have all made choices that have brought them here to King's Landing. Indeed, so much has happened since they secured the Red Keep without incident, and not all of it is he eager to share. He worries that what he has to say will bring her even greater, unexpected misery.

"I have something to tell you. Something that couldn't wait until morning."

Waiting may have given her a better night's sleep, but one of her servants would be like to tell her, and she would be forced to receive the report wearing that ivory mask of hers.

"What is it?"

The way her attention snaps back to him and she tenses visibly in her chair lets him know that his tone has given him away. Or perhaps she can feel his uneasiness permeate her, the way he sometimes hears and feels her inside his head.

"They were found in the dungeons."

"Who…who were found?"

He thinks she knows. It's as if the man's name hangs thick in the musty air of the room, unspoken, but palpable.

"What happened?" Her voice rises and for one moment he selfishly regrets that he will be the one to relate the death of the Kingslayer to her. There are other things he would rather tell her. Indeed, he has no desire to speak to her of other men. Even dead ones. "Jon. What happened?"

"He's dead and so is she." Cersei's throat slit and Jaime's gut pierced through by his own sword. The pair of them folded in on each other, his men reported. Like a pair of merchants square puppets with the strings cut.

"There's been a misunderstanding," she whispers, as if she works to convince herself of the fact. A shaky hand presses to her middle. "Surely there are a great number of people rotting in the dungeons. Most of your men have never been south before. They don't know, they're not familiar, they're…they're wrong."

Her eyes plead with him, and as much as he never liked the Kingslayer or the way he looked at Sansa like he wanted to devour her, Jon wishes he could find Jaime Lannister lurking somewhere about the Red Keep, so that she need not feel another loss. He would drag the Kingslayer from the Seven Hells if she would look at him with that look she gave him earlier—as if he is a hero. She would thank him for that. She will never thank him for bringing her this news.

"She doesn't look much like herself, I'm told, but Jaime Lannister is unmistakable, Sansa."

Her chest rises and falls with increasing rapidity, and he fears she is about to break, when she abruptly stands and turns her back to him.

"I'm sorry."

She told him to stop apologizing, but he must. He's not sorry to be rid of him, but he hates the pain it brings her. Her pain is his.

When she moves to the window on silent feet, he can see her tears illuminated, her pale face in profile.

"What will be done with the bodies?"

"I hadn't considered."

"Don't display them, please. I know there are those who would cheer it, but I don't think I could bear to see another head upon a spike. Not his."

Not like Eddard Stark's.

"I'll have them sent to Casterly Rock then."

She doesn't respond, and but Jon believes her silence means consent

She leans into the window, her shoulder resting against the glass, which has to be cold to the touch with Winter reaching ever further south. There's something about her steady, noiseless tears, her wilted posture that makes him feel like an intruder. He has delivered the news and now he suspects she would rather be alone to mourn the loss of a man Jon could not hope to understand.

He stands to go. "Sansa, I've outstayed my welcome…"

She interrupts, her voice trembling as she stares blankly out the window. "It's my fault. There were things I could have said that would have made him stay."

She was in love with him. Surely that is the one thing that could have stayed the Kingslayer's hand: the knowledge that Sansa would choose him, that she only stayed at Jon's side as a dutiful sister, as a dutiful subject, and that her heart belonged to him. It's a confirmation of Jon's long nursed fear, and he sinks his head into his hand, rubbing roughly at his temples. He knew it was wrong to want her, to raise his thoughts to her, but the pain is still like a knife in his chest—a feeling he knows all too well.

Ghost stirs on the bed, and Jon drops his hand to see Sansa's eyes upon him.

"Why didn't you?"

"I thought it would be selfish," she says, as she drags a nail over the stone of the sill. "He did that already, you know, stood by while his sister was married to another man, to be called upon when he was needed. He used to say something. He said the white cloak had sullied him. I know what he meant and I couldn't do that to him again. I couldn't repay his kindness to me with that sort of selfishness."

There's silence between them, and Jon makes no attempt to sift through all the things she has said. He suspects she said them more to herself than to him, but she hasn't forgotten his presence entirely. Not when she stretches out a hand to him and whispers, "I'd made my choice."

It's only a few short strides and he's at the window, pulling her into his chest the way he's wanted to since the moment she opened the door to him. Someone seems to have brought her bathwater, for her braided hair is slightly damp against his cheek and she smells of juniper. He must smell of ashes and sweat, but if it offends her, she gives no sign of it, digging desperately into his chest with her fingers, holding herself as tightly against him as he holds her.

It might be self delusion, but with her against him—soft and clinging—it feels like she must have chosen him. That she _is_ choosing him.

"Dearest," he murmurs into her hair. "Dearest."

He could hold her all night within the circle of his arms, but after quiet minutes pass, she maneuvers in his arms, lifting her head from his chest to splay a hand over his heart.

"She was inscribed on his soul, I think." She speaks into his chest without raising her eyes to him, while slowly shifting her fingers over the woolen fabric of his black doublet. Tapping her fingers, she says with a sigh, "Right here, where he couldn't get her out if he wanted to. Do you know what that feels like?"

He answers her without words, wills her to hear his answer. Yes, she's there, in his heart, and the only way to remove her would be to cut it out. Even if she doesn't want him, he will go to his grave with her written on his heart.

Maybe he does understand the dead man with the golden hand. At least a little.

Perhaps it doesn't need to end in tragedy for them. Perhaps fighting his own desires is useless and he need only speak what he feels to receive everything he thought he could never have. A wife—someone caring and good, who loves him in spite of his bastard birth, someone to share his burdens and be his best advisor and closest friend. Children. His own children to hold in the crook of his arm when they are born. Children who will know from the time they can crawl that they were wanted, will know the undoubted truth of their parentage and bear no shame. He wants all of this with Sansa alone.

He sweeps away the half dried tracks of her tears with his thumb, and she submits to it with only the thin sound of her breathing disturbing the stillness. It feels as if she is inside of him, answering him back, increasing the swell in his chest twofold, but he doesn't trust the feeling entirely, doesn't trust himself in this moment to sort through what are his feelings and what might be hers. His mind is like a cavern, reverberating, echoing endlessly.

_I love you._

The overlapping chant speaks of want and need and love. He presses his forehead to hers and the feeling intensifies, amplifies. He wonders hazily what it would feel like to kiss her in this moment, when even his fingertips tingle with want, when he is almost certain that they are in perfect harmony.

She jerks free of him, and for a dazed moment Jon fears that he has misunderstood everything, but then he registers Ghost jumping off the bed, thick hair bristling as he trots to the door. Jon was lost inside of himself, inside of her, but Sansa and Ghost have heard something outside the door, which has startled them both.

"Someone called your name," Sansa says, pulling her braid over her shoulder and taking another step back from him. She bumps slightly into the wall and blushes brightly enough that he can see the rose on her cheeks despite the loss of the window's light.

He hears it this time.

"Snow!"

The curse he utters at hearing his name shouted through the heavy door makes her smile. Amusement on her part is something of a relief, since he suddenly realizes any hope of keeping his presence here a secret is now lost. He suspects that fact has not escaped her either: Sansa is better attuned to the vicious vagaries of court gossip than he is.

"It sounds like Asha," she offers, when he remains frozen in place, fervently wishing the person would give up and leave. "Something could be wrong."

"Of course."

Her words shake him free of his lethargy and moves him towards the door. Asha awaits him on the other side. She doesn't wait for a greeting.

"There's a raven that's come for you from one dragon to another, Snow."

Daenerys. He had hoped to have at least a few days before he would be forced to deal with the looming threat of the Dragon Queen.

Asha looks strangely unconcerned, however dire this raven's message might be. Arms crossed over her chest, she leans to the side, looking past him into the room. He won't turn around to check, but he can imagine the perfectly composed face Sansa wears behind him. She's far too practiced to crumble under Asha's knowing looks.

"I'm needed, then?"

Asha smiles her slow curling smile. "You could say that. They're all flapping their arms, at a loss, because you weren't found in your chambers."

"Very well," he growls.

He calls goodnight to Sansa over his shoulder, and though his stride is long, Asha is quick at his heels, chuckling under her breath, as he moves ever further away from Sansa's chamber.

"I think you owe me a debt," Asha crows.

"How do you figure?"

He didn't much like the thought of being in a Greyjoy's debt. It was his intention to see to it that the balance worked the other way after all was said and done.

"When the men began to wet themselves for fear, I said I'd seen you, though I hadn't. Said I'd fetch you for them. I thought I'd know where to find you. And I was right." Asha's hawkish eyes twinkle with mirth at his expense.

"Yes, very impressive, Asha."

"Perhaps I'm a prophet, Snow," she says, jabbing him with an elbow.

"Perhaps you're a nuisance."

"That's a fine thank you for preventing anyone from finding you with the lovely Lady Stark."

Jon pushes his hair back and cocks a brow at her. "I think I'll remember the interruption more than the favor."

Asha fingers the axe at her side as she laughs, head tilting back enough that her short black hair brushes the collar of her cape. It's just the hearty sound Jon needed to clear his head. It's good that someone can laugh if even just for a moment.

"You men are much the same."

"Yes, I suppose we are."

Asha shrugs. "But she makes you a deal less tedious."

"Yes. That she does."


	15. Chapter 15

**Title**: A Winter's Tale  
><strong>Author<strong>: just_a_dram  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: ASOIAF  
><strong>Pairing<strong>: Jon/Sansa  
><strong>Rating<strong>: T  
><strong>Chapter Word Count<strong>: 2698  
><strong>Chapter Summary<strong>: Like a god, Jon can walk through flames, but she's not certain she will survive this.  
><strong>Author's Note<strong>: We have all earned some resolution. _And_, since I got a message about it: I am not portraying Daenerys as a monster. These chapters are Jon and Sansa (and previously Jaime's) POVs, and they have no reason to look forward to her conquest. They don't view her as a savior, and therefore, they're angry, afraid, and take a negative view of her.

* * *

><p>Chapter Fifteen<p>

Daenery's late night message has brought Jon's council together though the winter sun has only just crept over the horizon. It is one council for which Sansa wishes she was absent.

A heavy numbness settled into her limbs in the middle of the night as exhaustion and grief overwhelmed her and her tears—which wet first Ghost's fur and then her pillow—ran dry. Staring into her looking glass, a red eyed creature looked back at her, as her serving girl gently pulled a brush through her hair that morning, and she wondered if people could sense the emptiness, could sense that she was as brittle as an ancient shell washed up upon the shore. The girl certainly seemed afraid to speak.

She is Jaime Lannister's chief and sole mourner, and that alone should free her from listening to arguments over political and military strategy. Indeed, she would have sent her serving girl with excuses, when her presence was requested, but knowing that Jon needs her made her steel herself and slip into both her fur mantel and mask of the level headed sister of the king.

The rest of the room has not taken as great of care to compose themselves. The thought of scaly dragons with leathery wings that can blot out the sky being so close by has made everyone at table jittery and demanding. On any other day, it would be amusing to watch grown men squirm if the stakes were not so terribly high.

A man, who looks very much like a toad, one of Aegon's followers who joined their ranks upon Aegon's defeat, shifts in his seat, his warty face contorting. "Further bloodshed could be made wholly unnecessary."

After nearly an hour of discussing how best they might defend themselves against a seemingly undefeatable force of slave soldiers and fire breathing beasts, all heads turn towards the man, who appears to have a less hopeless solution forming behind his beady eyes.

"How so?" Jon asks, and Sansa can hear the weariness in his voice, the doubt that such a thing could be avoided.

They match this early morning, looking more alike than is usual, since he wears the face of a Stark and she a Tully. It would seem that grief and worry have etched similar lines onto their pale faces and painted matching bluish purple circles beneath their eyes.

"By a proposal of marriage, Your Grace."

Jon narrows his eyes. "Go on."

"If Daenerys would agree to marry you, Your Grace, she would wear the crown as well, and that might be enough to satisfy her. You could guide her and hold the real power."

At the man's words, Sansa finds it impossible to continue looking upon Jon. Her eyes dart to Asha, who sits across the table from her with her arms crossed over her chest. Asha sighs heavily, shaking her head before leaning her elbows on the table. The two women hold each other's gaze for a long moment, while the room fills with the mumbles of men, considering this new course of action that requires little sacrifice on their part, and it feels as if she shares a silent understanding with this rough warrior woman.

"You assume she can be controlled," Asha suddenly says in her brash, loud voice, which successfully silences most of the chatter. Her lip curls as if she thinks very little of the rotund man's suggestion. "You mean to rein her in, but she doesn't seem like a woman that would wear a bit."

Sansa doesn't know whether Asha's efforts are made on her behalf or whether she merely thinks it a stupid plan that underestimates Daenery's character, but it makes no difference, for other men at table have already latched on to the idea with a terrifying zeal. They eagerly put in their two bits, pointing out that "It would save the city from burning." A thought that earns a chorus of approval that only increases when someone thinks to add, "And all of our lives, perhaps."

Sansa feels her heart begin to flutter. It's as Jaime said. They mean for him to marry the Queen of Death, and Sansa knows now that she doesn't want that at all for Jon. The thought of losing him on top of everything and everyone else she has lost is simply too much to contemplate. No, Jon can't be someone else's. After everything, that simply cannot be. She wants him for her own.

She was pale this morning, when she stared at her reflection, but she can feel her cheeks heating. _ Gods, I want Jon_.

And yet, who is she in this world of loss and blood and tears and how do her feelings rank, when such an arrangement might spare the lives of many? It would arguably be prudent to support this proposal. She has argued the prudent course before, although it ran counter to what her heart desired. That is what has made her useful, has made her a woman, who is not a slave to her heart.

No more: she feels the shackles most acutely, and Jaime's last words to her echo in her mind. _It will twist both of you into something ugly. _The price we pay to end wars can be too much, he insisted. This feels like too much.

She cannot raise her eyes to his face, but she watches Jon's hands, as they fist on the table and he speaks slowly, "I would not ally myself to the woman who has burnt the smallfolk of Westeros in her thirst for a throne."

"We're not asking you to be allies. We're asking you to warm her bed and get sons on her, and from what I hear, she's rather a beauty," the toad man says, leaning back in his chair, so that it squeaks under his weight. He speaks with even greater confidence now that most of the men clamber to support his idea.

"That's my aunt you speak of."

Jon is not yet convinced. Sansa tries to hold on to that. Targaryen marrying Targaryen is what made the Targaryen's mad, made them unfit to rule. Have they all forgotten?

"And a prettier aunt one couldn't have," someone laughs, and Sansa's stomach flips.

They say her hair is Targaryen silver-white, her eyes violet, that she is short and shapely and wears exotic dresses that expose more flesh than seems possible in winter. They say she is the most beautiful woman in the world. Jon might feel the same should he look upon her. He might think it an honor to wed her. Her eyes flutter shut at the thought of a bride with hair as white as the snow blossoms in her hair with her arm looped through Jon's.

"She has made political marriages before, Your Grace. She might be amenable to it."

"She might be. I am not," Jon responds darkly.

With her eyes closed, Sansa has only been able to place Jon's voice, until Asha announces, "I had no idea that you men were so dedicated to matchmaking. If I'd known I would find myself in a room full of toothless old hens, who would rather make proposals of marriage than stand their ground like men, I would have gone home and left the wedding planning to you lot."

Her declaration draws some chuckles, but Sansa can tell no one is actually cowed.

"We might as well explore the option."

"Then you can marry her, ser. Your king will have nothing to do with dragons."

"You _are_ a dragon."

Jon's fist comes down on the table with a thud that makes Sansa's eyes fly open, as he bites back, "Don't think you can presume to remind me of what or who I am."

Sansa has never seen Jon so close to fighting openly with his council, and she can't help feeling that she is the cause of his refusal to even consider the match. Though he does not look at her, she suspects that he is thinking of her, and she wonders if she has already poisoned him. Petyr taught her how to poison a man while wearing a pretty smile. She may have poisoned Jon _with_ her smile. He is a good man and he would be a good king, but if she stays, he will never have the chance, she thinks in desperation, as she pushes back from the table and finds her feet, though her knees feel shaky beneath her.

"Lady Sansa?" Jon asks, his eyes on her for the first time.

"I need to rest, Your Grace. A sudden headache. If you'll excuse me, please," she begs, though she is already backing out of the room.

Move slowly, she schools herself, but she can feel herself tripping over her own feet as she passes through the door and begins to hurry down the corridor. The walls of this haunted place seem to close in on her. Her left hand finds the stone, cool to the touch, and drags it along its uneven surface with a wild thought that the pressure from her fingertips is the only thing that prevents it from completely collapsing, crushing her into dust, finishing off the job Joffrey and Cersei and all the rest began many name days ago.

She is halfway to her bedchamber, when a hand grasps her elbow and pulls her up short. She lurches and is caught in someone's arms. Jon's arms, she realizes with a sob she only manages to catch in the back of her throat by sheer force of will.

"Are you all right?" he asks, not in the least breathless, though he must have run to catch up with her.

She shouldn't allow it, she should be strong and aloof, a lady carved from ice, but her head finds his shoulder and her fingers twist in the fur of his cape, as she presses herself against him. He is warm—almost hot—to the touch and solid and he smells as he should. He smells like the North, even here in King's Landing, which stinks of disease and refuse although frost and snow begins to ice everything over.

She wants to hold him tight in this moment, because if he marries Daenerys Stormborn, she will have to head north for Winterfell. She won't be able to stand by, a dutiful subject, waiting to be used as a pawn, to be given in payment to some lord worthy of titles and beauty for his service to the crown. She won't submit to it, not ever and certainly not while Daenerys sits at Jon's side. Tears prick her eyes, as she realizes that she won't even have Jaime to ride north with her, making her smile through her aching sadness with his irreverence and hollow cocksure grin. She will be entirely alone, and all she'll have is the memory of this moment, of how for a space something of her family, of her home, was restored to her.

He speaks her name and it feels as much like a caress as his hand stroking her hair. It would be so easy to melt here in his arms, while he whispers against her ear, so she draws back. Though she is not entirely successful, for he holds fast to her shoulders, not letting her flee again.

"I have to go, Jon."

He shakes his head. "Go? Go where?"

"I'm sorry." The tears that have pooled in her eyes grow too large and run down her cheeks. "It will be all right. Go back to your council. They need you." She needs him too, but she is just one woman and he has a kingdom to save.

"I won't be all right if you leave. Forget them. Forget what they said. It's upset you, and you needn't worry about me marrying her."

She exhales heavily. It shouldn't surprise her that Jon doesn't believe for a moment her excuses. She is a practiced liar, but she can hear him inside of her head and supposes it is the same for him. How can they keep secrets from each other?

"Marrying her might be for the best though." She wishes she sounded more certain and assured of that fact, but it nearly costs her everything to say it.

"Don't say that." He slips his hand into her hair, gripping the base of her head. "You don't want that. Do you?"

Sansa's face scrunches, the tears coming faster as she shakes her head no. "It's not what I want at all." She thinks of another woman held in the circle of his arms, and buries her fingers in his curls.

"Tell me what you want." His voice is commanding. There is none of the uncertainty he spoke with last night. It is as if he already knows her answer and only needs to hear her say it.

Her breath comes fast. She didn't expect to make this confession so soon, but life and death and their fate hangs in the balance. "In my dreams my sons all look like my brothers and sometimes I have a grey eyed daughter, dark and wild like Arya…like you."

Jon has been so careful with her, so controlled, so very honorable, but suddenly his hand is on her neck, his thumb pressing into her jaw and the fingers of his other hand are tight in her hair. His lips graze and slant against hers and this kiss is nothing like the cautious, purely fraternal ones that came before it. His lips are full and demanding against hers and her back meets the cold of the wall with a jolt, as his tongue disappears inside her mouth. It isn't her moan, it isn't his: it's theirs, when his tongue brushes over hers.

Anyone that stumbled upon them now would not speak of arranging a marriage for the king, for there is nothing brotherly about the way Jon urges her against the wall, his hips and chest meeting hers, hard and unyielding. His hand sliding down her neck, over the opening in her gown, stopping just at the swell of her breasts is the insistent touch of a man. His manner is nothing like it was before. _She_ feels nothing like she did before. She burns. His lips are the spark that lights a fire in her belly.

Like a god, Jon can walk through flames, but she's not certain she will survive this. It is as if she's never been kissed before, and now that she has, her heart is too big for her chest, the love she feels for him, the want and need too much for her frail, human body. It will consume her.

But just when she thinks she will crumble in his grip, he releases her and he is at her feet, his hand reaching up to seize hers and bring them to his lips.

She murmurs his name in confusion, her pulse still thundering in her ears, and she realizes he is saying something to her, pressing words along with his kisses onto her knuckles.

"Wait, wait, begin again," she begs. "I missed, I didn't hear…"

He smiles up at her, and there's that almost painful swelling in her chest again. Jon should smile a great deal more.

"Marry me. Be my wife."

Jon is doing the proper thing, but Sansa finds herself incapable of playing the part she should know so well, the cold lady, who is rarely moved and takes such offers in stride. She kneels down before him, and though she is a mess of billowing skirts and dragging furs and the floor they walk upon is covered in a layer of dust that will coat them both, they both smile like a pair of fools.

"Yes?" he prompts.

"Yes," she says through tears that once more make tracks down her cheeks. "Tomorrow. Marry me tomorrow. Please."

"Tomorrow?" he asks, and he looks baffled by this assertion, and Sansa would remind him that life is fleeting, but they need very little reminder that they could all be dead by tomorrow, so she kisses him instead.

And for a moment even she can forget the rising darkness.


	16. Chapter 16

**Title**: A Winter's Tale  
><strong>Author<strong>: just_a_dram  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: ASOIAF  
><strong>Pairing<strong>: Jon/Sansa  
><strong>Rating<strong>: T  
><strong>Chapter Word Count<strong>: 3329  
><strong>Chapter Summary<strong>: It is not the first time she has been given a white cloak, but it will be the last, and because of it, today this Godswood becomes something different to Sansa, it is remade in her eyes.  
><strong>Author's Note<strong>: I promised smut in this chapter in my discussions of my slow going progress on tumblr, which happens to be a good place to follow my writing progress and read teasers for upcoming chapters. My blog over there is justadram. I ended up deciding that the smut deserved its own chapter-the rating _will _change next chapter. So, set an alert. I was terribly slow to update last time around, and part of that has to do with my schedule and part of it has to do with the fact that I'd reached the point in the story where I had nothing written for future chapters, so it was slower going. I went ahead and outlined the rest of the fic this week, including writing future bits of dialogue, so I shouldn't ever be quite this slow to update again. Thanks for sticking it out with me. Love my readers!

* * *

><p>Chapter Sixteen<p>

The Godswood in the Red Keep is one that Sansa knows well. An acre of elm, alder, and black cottonwood trees spread out before them, their leaves long since browned and dropped to the ground. In this space, the sound of the swift waters of Blackwater Rush below them fills what would otherwise be a pressing stillness.

It is an awkward group that is gathered around them, shifting and frowning or wearing false smiles, but speaking not a word. When Jon brought Sansa back to the council, her hand grasped firmly in his, and announced that they would be married on the next day, silence filled that room too. Sansa has felt as if silence has followed them ever since, and if it was not for the security from knowing that Jon loves her, it would be oppressive. Those who surround them are disapproving or disappointed—all but Asha, who crossed her arms over her chest and smirked rather knowingly at the other lords and knights, when Jon made his announcement.

Sansa knows they happily would show their displeasure, their frustration that a marriage to the Dragon Queen can no longer hope to save their hides by absenting themselves from this ceremony before the heart tree that is a great oak, limbs laden with dormant smokeberry vines, but he is the king they have chosen. None of them can afford to offend the king and his new queen with Daenerys within a day's march of the city. The Queen of Death does not seem the sort to welcome with open arms those who sheltered the day previous under a different claimant.

Sansa knows that something will have to be done, however, to assuage their anger. Things must be made right before fire is rained down upon them. Unity is of the greatest importance, for Jon will need more than just her support, when the time comes.

Perhaps having their wedding here in the Godswood—a place that holds no fond memories for Sansa—will help repair some of the damage done amongst the Northerners, but that is not why Sansa chose it.

_You'll want to be married in the royal sept_, Jon suggested. _Before the Seven_.

Her father had made such concessions to her mother, building her a sept in Winterfell, so that she might worship her faith. Sansa wonders whether it was something between her parents with Lady Stark never quite at home before a heart tree and Lord Stark awkward standing before an altar.

Sansa looked out a window in the royal apartments towards where she knew the sept stood with its high crystal windows before the Maidenvault. She tried to picture herself and Jon there, but the image would not come. She thought she knew why.

_The Old Gods. It's the faith of our people, Jon, of the North_.

_Yes, but that needn't sway you_, he said with an eagerness to please that made Sansa's chest swell.

_I prayed to all the gods—old and new—for my home, and you came to me. I think I know who to thank for that_. Jon's brow furrowed slightly. _You keep the Old Gods. So shall I_.

Sansa would rather honor the things they share, the things that bind her to Jon.

They were both bastards too, and Sansa is unafraid of Jon's lack of a house name. The High Septon, who she suspects would be preaching in the streets against Jon if it were not for the fact that King's Landing has been ruled by five kings in rather short turn and therefore none seem likely to last, very kindly pointed out the lack of Jon's name, when one of the councilors summoned the man upon Jon's announcement of his immediately impending marriage.

_It will make the ceremony itself somewhat awkward_, he said with hands spread before him. _A king with no family name_.

_You can legitimize yourself, Jon. You hold King's Landing_, she assured him after the dreadful man was sent away, having been informed by Sansa herself that they would have no need of him for tomorrow's ceremony, as septons are entirely superfluous in his king's religion, and hinting that he too might be made redundant if he should choose to displease the king.

She would also remind Jon that he sits the throne, but as of yet she has not seen him in the monstrous thing that sometimes features in her nightmares. As far as she knows, he has not set foot inside the Great Hall at all. It would seem that he is waiting for something. Perhaps it is his dread of being king or perhaps he feels as if he hasn't earned the right to sit upon the Iron Throne.

Perhaps he feels as if he hasn't earned the Targaryen name either, but she knows him as Jon Snow, loves him as such, and would have accepted him either way. But it is to be Snow, she thinks, as he stands before her in the Godswood clad in black. He wears no Targaryen red, no crown sits upon his dark curls. His cloak does not bear a dragon or a direwolf, though Ghost is close at his feet. It is white as snow and bare of any sigil.

Like the Kingsguard.

Her heart skips, as she pictures Jaime, tall and golden with a teasing smile playing upon his lips. It isn't real: he's dead and he could never marry in life. His white cloak prevented it—that and kinship. His love was a tragedy, but theirs need not be so. Jon can choose. He says that her red hair is kissed by fire, lucky, but they are both luckier than Jaime. Jon, who vowed to take no wife, can drape her in white and marry Sansa Stark, his once sister, because he is king and a Targaryen even though he was born a bastard and given the name Snow.

It is not the first time she has been given a white cloak, but it will be the last, and because of it, today this Godswood becomes something different to Sansa, it is remade in her eyes.

The voices around them are still silent, as Jon's hands settle on her shoulders, strong and certain, but she hears something. It begins as a rustle of bare branches of the Godswood, like a weak whisper that raises gooseflesh along her arms. It takes shape, as all of the trees in the acre whistle from a wind without source, forming words. She knows the voice.

Jon knows it too, for she hears him echo her surprise: _Bran_. They are not alone. They are not the only two here in this Godswood and in this moment it isn't what she envisioned for herself as a girl, but everything is perfect.

After, when they enter the Queen's Ballroom and Jon tilts his head close to her ear to ask—"Did you hear it?"—she can answer with conviction.

"Yes. It was Bran. I know it was, and you knew it was him too." She can feel his certainty as much as she can feel the sync of their hearts and his love for her heating her veins until she is nearly as hot to the touch as he is.

"Yes. I've heard him before. I heard him in the North, after. I thought perhaps I was out of my mind."

He's not. Unless it is shared madness.

"Do you think he lives or…" Was it a ghost, she wants to ask, but cannot bring herself to finish.

"I couldn't say, but I'll find him, Sansa, if he lives."

He swears it, and tears prick the corners of her eyes. I love this man, she thinks. This is what father meant, when he said he would find someone good and gentle and brave for her. He was always right there.

She trusts Jon to fulfill his vow. There was a time not so long ago that she trusted no one, and then heroes in the most unlikely form forced her to rethink her cynicism. But his vow is contingent upon the completion of this war, and that is what he leaves unspoken. To seek Bran now would mean certain death for them all. There are things that need tending first, and then the rest will come. Bran, Rickon, Arya—all her lost siblings wait to be discovered and the whisper of Bran's voice through the trees is the first time she has allowed to hope that more of home might be recovered.

All the rest doesn't matter. Not the lack of minstrels—she thought of Robb, when it was suggested, and dismissed the notion directly. Not the lack of a lovely, ornate wedding gown of silk—she's dressed in her best dove grey wool, which is still stained dark with mud at the hem despite her serving girl's attempts at scrubbing it clean. Not the lack of smiling faces, for everyone but herself and Jon is mostly cheerless. Not the lack of dish after dish of exotic, rich food to entice the tongue and fill the belly to the point of overindulgence—there is barely any food to be had within the walls of the city, and the cook has made do with flat bread, chickpeas, and dried meats. None of it matters with Jon at her side.

Besides, the room becomes a bit noisier, more pleasantly boisterous, when the servers bring out the extra rations of ale—Sansa's gift to their sullen court upon her marriage to their king.

"A well chosen gift, dearest. I think you couldn't have given them a better one," Jon observes with a goblet poised at his own lips.

She watches the roll of his throat, as he swallows, marveling at how it her pulse quickens at the sight.

There is nothing particularly choice for Jon to serve Sansa from his plate at their wedding feast, but Ghost, who sits dutifully beside her chair, will appreciate the dried meat. Feeding him is a good enough way to distract herself from the breadth of Jon's chest and the strength of his fingers wrapped around the goblet. She attempts to cut the meat, but it is too tough, so she settles without much remorse for letting Ghost have the whole cut, bending over the side of her chair to feed him from her open palm.

She was right to think that he would be glad to have it—he too looks a hair too lean, like the rest of them, and the meat is gone in one toss of his fine white head. He licks her fingers clean, and Sansa wrinkles her nose at the strings of saliva, though she coos at the direwolf as if he was a lap dog. Jon hands her the square of linen from his lap, and she wipes each finger in turn, peering up from her task to remind him of the gravity of their situation.

"The ale will tide them over, but it will take a victory for them to forgive me entirely, I'm afraid."

The mention of the oncoming war clouds Jon's face for a moment, and Sansa presses a kiss to his brow as she stands, wishing she could save him from the worry, save him from whatever fate awaits them both, for she shares his fate now more so than ever.

He is her solemn, careworn Jon, when he assures her, "It isn't your fault."

"Of course not," she says, fighting a smile, as she wipes a drop of ale from his full bottom lip with her thumb.

His face softens at her touch, a rush of blood flooding his cheeks, and she's glad to see it. She likes very much the effect she seems to have on him.

"You're leaving your lord husband already?" he teases, catching her sleeve with his fingertips, as she moves from the table.

"The ale will not last the night. I best make amends every way I can," she says, promising to return to him.

She will smile, she will listen, she will laugh, she will place her hand on sloped shoulders and rough hands, she will make what promises she can, and do her best to fulfill them in the future, however short that future might prove to be. She will use every weapon in her armory, and she will win them back. She will make them see that she can be a strong queen, a good queen, a queen they can love. A queen they can trust. One that is worthy of Jon Snow.

She likes to think that she has some success. Petyr does not purr instructions in her ear as he once did, haunting her waking hours, but not all of his lessons are without worth. She thinks she can be herself and still master a room.

As she moves about the ballroom, bending her ear to every concern and laughing merrily at ever bawdy joke, she is pleased to find herself at long last beside Asha Greyjoy's chair. There is something she very much wants to tell Asha.

"Lady Greyjoy," she says, as Asha lifts a goblet to her.

"Felicitations."

"Why, thank you." Sansa pauses, glancing about her to see whether any of Asha's table companions are listening, but the men have turned away, bored as soon as the new queen's gaze was not directed at them. "Thank you for the things you said in council yesterday." Asha drinks deeply from her goblet, but says nothing with her eyes slightly narrowed, staring down her sharp nose. Sansa is reminded once more that her facility with men does her no good when speaking with Asha, but she presses on. "I don't presume to think that you said it for my benefit or for Jon's, but…"

"Not for Snow's benefit," Asha interrupts. "I'm not concerned with the king getting his own way. And certainly not for our own benefit," she says, gesturing with an open palm and one thinly arched brow. "We should be planning a defense of this rotting city tonight, and yet we sit and toast your wedding."

Sansa's back stiffens. "I promise you that Jon takes the safety of his people very seriously."

"Yes, but you're a distraction. I think you know that."

Yes, and she could be a poison if she so chose, but she only wants to help, be of service. Sansa tried to contemplate doing the dutiful thing, but once he offered, she could not say no to him. Jaime's warnings crashed down upon her and her heart would not allow her to say anything but yes. Yes a million times over, for she can't imagine being separated from him ever again. She will have to prove herself an asset once more to undo whatever real discord she has caused between Jon and his men, but there may not be much time to do so.

Asha crosses her arms over her chest and considers her. "You're also not as worthless as I'd imagined you to be." Sansa would laugh at that, but Asha isn't finished. "He could have chosen worse."

Sansa nods and with a thick swallow manages to murmur, "Yes, well, how kind of you to say so. Thank you," before rocking back on her heels, ready to turn away from this fruitless conversation, when Asha continues.

"I don't much like the notion that women are here solely to be married off so as to solve every war and disagreement over land and coin. I like to think I'm rather more important than a mule at market." Even after insulting on her wedding day, Sansa must acknowledge Asha's worth—Asha is worth a great deal more. She's proven it in several settings. "With her throne in sight, Daenerys wouldn't submit to such a role. Would you?"

Sansa wets her lips, thinking of the Lannisters, of Petyr's plans for her. "I have been the subject of such transactions, yes."

Asha's head lowers, so that she looks up through her black lashes at Sansa. "So have I."

This is something they have in common. It is the lot of women, she supposes, whether they wield an ax or weaponize their tears, since men see women as much the same and for the same purpose. Jon mentioned some weeks past that Asha's uncle married her off by proxy. The old man to whom she has been bound rules the Iron Islands, and after the war Asha means to return to reclaim them from the man who dares to call himself her husband.

It is the same defiance she felt at the thought of Jon being coerced into giving her in payment to one of his loyal men. Defiance and heartbreak. Maybe Asha has known heartbreak as well. It is not an impossibility.

"I would not to submit to it again. I would have gone north, gone home."

Asha grabs for her goblet, raising it again in a salute, this time with less flourish, exposing the first to have been more a mockery. "Then we understand each other."

Asha peers into her goblet, which appears to be empty. "You know he would have never married Daenerys, don't you?" Amusement quirks Asha's thin lips. "Any fool could see that it was always going to be you. He's been staring at you like you hung the moon ever since you met him on the battlefield in the Vale." Sansa feels her cheeks heat. Had it been that long? "So, you're welcome, and if you find me another round of ale, we'll be square."

Before she returns to Jon's side, Sansa manages that and manages to get more than one lord to forget that they blamed her from spoiling their cowardly escape plans by marrying their king.

"I missed you," she sighs, as she takes her seat, reaching for the hand that rests on his thigh.

It almost feels as if Jon's gaze burns right through her, when he draws her hand into his lap. "You were born to this."

She would argue with him, but she begins to suspect that his fondness for her makes him think rather too highly of her. It is nice to be sincerely praised, to be valued for oneself and not for whom one might be in a different light or with a different shade of hair. "So were you, Jon."

"So it's said. A Targaryen," he says, as if he is still testing the sound of it. "Would it have been better for me to marry you as a Targaryen and not a bastard?"

"No, Jon."

He pulls that plump lip between his teeth, which makes Sansa think of kissing him until she notices that he looks conflicted. "I love you. I want to do everything right."

She squeezes his hand and leans into him until their shoulders brush. "You must promise to tell me often."

"What?"

She stretches her neck until her lips are by his ear to whisper, "That you love me."

"I do," he says, his voice deeper than a moment earlier.

"Then nothing could have been more perfect," she promises, sitting back in her seat, otherwise she will have the whole court hooting at their new queen's antics, for she can think of nearly nothing but his lips and the feel of them pressed against hers, hot and insistent. "I'm proud. I am proud to be your lady wife, Lady Snow."

"It is _Queen_ Sansa though," he replies, happiness making his grey eyes glint in the multiplying light of the mirrored sconces that line the richly carved paneled walls.

He looks proud that he can give her this title, this position of honor, but she is truly happy just to be his. She has been on the precipice of being queen once before and she has seen how being queen can hold very little charms. But she already knows without question that being chosen by Jon is the greatest gift she has ever been given.


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter Rating**: M+ for sexual content  
><strong>Chapter Word Count<strong>: 4611  
><strong>Chapter Summary<strong>: It does no good to pretend that they have all the time in the world. They may only have this night.  
><strong>Author's Note<strong>: This is the long promised pay off, the wedding night chapter. If you want updates on how the next chapter is progressing, follow me on tumblr (username justadram).

* * *

><p>Chapter Seventeen<p>

Jon's hand pushes the door behind her closed and traps her against it, as he leans into her.

He has led her back to his chambers, his strides becoming increasingly quick and his grip on her hand ever stronger as the distance between themselves and the chamber became less. He's not sure whether his overt eagerness is what it should be or whether he has made a fool of himself, but all his thoughts are focused on one thing.

"Sansa."

"Jon," she says with a slow smile.

His left hand traces the curve of her waist, the narrow of it the perfect shape for his hand. The perfect spot to hold her and pull her close. He does and her body goes willingly, molding to him, warm and soft and smelling of some oil she must have applied this morning that smells clean and sharp like the woods in winter.

Exquisite. Sansa is exquisite. She doesn't require silks and jewels or a crown upon her red hair. She deserves all those things and more, but nothing she dons can outshine her refined beauty. Jon knows that Southron fashions for women favor the exposure of more skin than one would ever find in the North, and she is far more demure than this city is accustomed to celebrating in her simple high necked woolen gown. That still didn't stop him from thinking of very little else but of the pleasure of seeing, touching, tasting what lies underneath all bloody day.

"We should have left that feast two hours ago."

Her eyes twinkle with what appears to be amusement, but she sounds a perfect innocent, when she asks, "Why is that, _husband_?"

Perhaps she finds his impatience more befitting a of green youth, but when his lips descend upon her neck, where she's soft and smells impossibly good in this city of too many bodies, he is rewarded with a contented sigh. He kisses and sucks and nips her with his teeth until she threads her fingers through his hair, and the feel of her fingers tugging slightly is enough to make him groan—partly from anticipation and partly from annoyance.

He could have been touching her, laving her with his tongue, he could have been whispering the things he has wanted to say for more than a moon now into her ear while he moved inside of her, but instead he watched his court pout like children. There are aspects of being king that he finds wearisome. Delaying his satisfaction and Sansa's is now first among them.

He speaks his answer against her collarbone, where her dress begins and the rest of her body is hidden to him. "Because I want you."

Sansa pulls on his hair until he's almost nose to nose with her. He can see the silent question forming behind her eyes and hear her uncertainty inside of himself. What she needs to hear from him makes his stomach flip, for he does not want to unnerve her with his answer.

When he does not answer, she asks it aloud, "Since when?"

He smoothes his calloused thumb over the apple of her cheek, and she inclines into his touch, pressing herself into the palm of his hand. "Far longer than I care to admit."

"Asha said," she begins, as her eyes slip shut. "Asha said that she knew it in the Vale. On the battlefield."

"Well, she has recently made some claims to being a prophetess, when it comes to my thoughts."

He teases, but when she opens her eyes again, he can see the raw need there. "It would do me good to hear the truth of it. From you."

Another woman might ask such things in order to celebrate her conquest over a man's heart. There is something else entirely behind Sansa's question, something that speaks to the fragility she keeps so well hidden and the uncertainty that has been her life. She wants to be loved for who she is. She wants to be certain of that love. Jon can understand that.

"You were the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen," he says, as he maneuvers her away from the door, backing them into the chamber.

He can feel the thick of a bear skin rug under his feet as they step back, but he keeps his eyes on hers, so incredibly blue, a reminder of her Tully blood. She looks a Tully, but her steel, her remarkable bravery reminds him of the North. Of home. "Seeing you, remembering, I felt like myself again." He was no longer a creature who burned and lived, a figure of prophecy, he was Jon Snow and she was Sansa Stark, and he felt whole. He desired, needed, wanted to keep her. "I wanted you from the start."

He would have been afraid to say it at the time, afraid of how she would have reacted to such an admission from the man she had called her half brother. Even now his heart beats faster from the boldness of his confession, of baring himself in this way to anyone. The truth is that she is the only one in this world of wights and dragons and encroaching ice that he can flay himself open for, exposing his weaknesses for her to probe.

He is safe with her, and he is determined that she be safe with him, as safe as he can keep her.

She rises up on her toes, and the kiss she gives him is slow, determined, and deep, running her tongue along the seam of his mouth until it is dragging deliciously against his own. Her hands come up to flatten against his chest, urging him backward until his back meets the tall post of his bed. His head cracks into it, but the sharp pain seems nothing compared to the pleasure of the bite of her teeth into the fullness of his lip.

"Gods, Sansa. Gods," he gasps, and he's grasping the back of her head, running his hands down her neck, over her shoulders, his fingers gripping her sides tightly beneath the swell of her breasts.

"Once you found me, I wouldn't have been parted from you," she says, sounding breathless, as she begins to pull at the latches on his doublet. He stares down at her nimble fingers, as they work, his thumbs sketching restless, mindless circles against her body, caressing the underside of her breasts with each upward brush, and her breath tickles the skin she exposes, where his tunic is split. "I would have stayed at your side as your wife, your sister, or your counselor. I would have followed your army as your serving girl." He envisions her on her knees, looking up at him through her lashes, and he blames his thoughts on his overpowering, heady arousal. Pressed up against him like this, she must know. She struggles with a clasp and her eyes flick up to his. "I won't ever be parted from you, Jon. I love you."

He's heard the words in his head, her gentle murmurs muffled like he was hearing them through water. He's felt it too. But she's never said it aloud.

He can almost taste the acrid spike of fear in the back of his throat—her fear—when she speaks the words. It is fear and a rush of familiar faces in his mind's eye: those he counted as his siblings—Robb, Bran, Rickon, and Arya—along with Lord Eddard Stark and his beautiful lady wife, Catelyn. Even Septa Mordane and Jeyne Poole, the daughter of the steward of Winterfell, is there before his eyes for a moment, looking not as he last saw her, but as she did when they were all children, as she must have looked when last Sansa parted from her. Sansa has lost everyone, everyone she has ever loved, and to admit she loves him frightens her.

The world has given her so much pain. He can't undo that, but he can make her forget for a space, he can give her new, better memories. He wants to make her boneless with pleasure, and now he can, there is nothing preventing it: Sansa is his wife.

He bends at the knees, wrapping his arms around her lithe thighs and lifting. Her hands clutch at his shoulders, as he swings her around and deposits her atop the bed. As she lays back, her red hair fans out around her over the soft grey furs, just as he'd once dreamt it would—her hair, her head upon his pillow.

She has divested him of his doublet, dropped and left where it fell, but there are still too many clothes keeping her skin from his, and he is hard just thinking about the warmth of her body, the creases of her limbs, her long legs, and what's between them. As he pulls his tunic over his head, he tells her to roll over, so that he might unlace her.

He tugs at the laces, the scar on his hand making his movements clumsier than he would like. Her face is buried, hidden from him, when he frees her of her last binding and he takes a moment to brush her hair off her shoulder. It is thick, and he grips it in his hand, wrapping it around his fist.

"Is this all right?" he asks, leaning down to kiss her exposed shoulder.

He wondered just two nights ago what it would feel like to kiss her, when he could hear her in his head, when his whole body felt like it was a chamber made to echo her every feeling. He felt it—the ringing in his body—for the first time in the corridor before he went to his knee and the perfect knowledge that flooded him in that moment gave him the courage to ask her to be his. Now he tastes it again, when she twists atop the furs and pulls him down by his shoulders, and it is as overwhelming as the first time. She tows him onto the bed atop her and she kisses him, kisses him, kisses him until he gasps against her mouth and his whole body sings with the coil of her passion.

When her hands find the laces on his breeches, something inside of Jon breaks. Whatever control he possessed is lost, and as he strips her of the rest of her clothing, he confesses everything, panting the words, pressing them into her skin with hot kisses, painting them over her body as he drags his tongue over her soft flesh. And as much as sliding her smallclothes down her legs undoes him, as much as the feel of his tongue tracing the curve of her breast and his lips finding her pink nipple and his hand stealing underneath her body as she arches into him excite him, as much as the scrape of her nails down his chest enflames him, it is his name on her lips whispered urgently between and over his words that have him straining against the loosened breeches trapped on hips.

Her hands attempt to grab at the material, to free him of his clothing as well, but he is not yet finished with his path of wet kisses down her body that brings him to kneel upon the floor and slide his hands slowly under her thighs, down the length of them to the crook of her knee, where her woolen stockings stop. And he pulls, pulling her to the edge of the bed, so that her legs dangle before him.

He softly shushes the confusion he can feel bubbling up inside of her with a kiss to the inside of her thigh, murmuring against her flesh. He marks the silk ribbons on her stockings—a delicate contrast to the form and function of the warm stockings themselves—with his index finger and he can feel her doubts ebb. Her hands find his hair, twining. Running his hands down the swell of her calves, he nudges each leg over his shoulders, and he kisses her the way as he has attempted not to imagine before this moment.

At the stroke of his tongue, opening the juncture of her legs below her bright red curls, she sits up, her fingers tightening painfully in his hair, and she says his name in a tone that borders somewhere between alarm and thrill. He hums his response, chancing a look up at her—her pretty face flushed, her lips parted, and her eyes blinking down at him. He moves the flat of his tongue over her again and again, and she shudders under his touch.

He repeats his question from earlier, "Is this all right?" though it's lower and rougher sounding than before from the desperate little noises she's making, the slick feel of her against his tongue, and the taste of her—gods, the taste of her—and her answer comes none too fast and none too composed, while his tongue works upon her over and over.

"Yes, yes, I think, yes."

And it must not be bad, because his attentions set her heels inching up his back, her legs falling open, and her body moving timidly against his mouth. He attempts to wordlessly encourage her, his hands settling on her hips to guide her movements, but he can tell that in spite of her tensed muscles and throaty whimpers, this is either too new or too much, and she won't find her release this way.

He withdraws enough to bite at the soft flesh of her thigh, where her pulse thrums, and then gentle her with a kiss before coming to his feet once more. Her hands go immediately to his hips, and she's already loosing him from his breeches, as he kicks free of his boots and tells her, "I'll do to do that again," He cups her jaw. "And it will be better. I'll do better."

"It was good, Jon." Her fingers wrap around his cock and his grip on her reflexively tightens. "So good," she whispers with a thick swallow. What she says is almost lost to him, because as her hand slides over him, blood rushes in his ears and his eyes want to slam shut, but he wants to watch her and his whole body goes stiff with the wanting. So good. So very, very good. "I just…"

"I know." He forces himself to remove himself from her grasp so that he might grab her about the waist. "I want to be inside of you."

"Yes, Jon," she agrees with a quick inhalation, and he lifts her, setting her back further in the bed.

It's a momentary relief, when he lies atop her and her body finally meets his without anything between them and she draws her leg up alongside his hip, opening herself to him. She's pale ivory and sweet smelling and all rounded curves and supple flesh, and he could worship her for hours, but Sansa's rush to marry has infected him. It does no good to pretend that they have all the time in the world. They may only have this night. He tries not to think it, tries to push it away, but if they only have tonight, it will never be enough and all he can think of is the promise of burying himself inside of her, where he can feel how very wet he has made her.

When her hands skate over his sides and her fingers dig into his arse, he takes that as encouragement enough.

He takes several short strokes, and when he finally reaches his length, she moans and he finds himself gritting out more than one discourteous word that he never planned on saying in his wife's company. The sensation of being inside of her hits him like a thunderclap. She's just so very wet and warm and she's Sansa, and when she shifts to accommodate him better, angling her hips to meet his thrusts, he feels like he's going to lose it. It's been too long. He wants her too much. She's tight and he feels like she can't be too far behind, but he's going to lose it and disappoint her.

He gathers her hair in his hand, fisting it once more, the coolness of it grounding himself, as her teeth worry his neck. It helps—he's still on the edge, holding onto his control by his fingertips, but it helps. And he attempts to think only of her, of her pleasure, listening to her breathing, adjusting his pace to what seems to make her breath come faster, what makes her pant his name against his lips, and what causes her fingers to bear down into the tired muscles on his back.

He achieves a rhythm, hits a spot, and she utters a strangled sound.

"Like that, love? Like that?"

"Yes. Gods, yes," she gasps and her head arches back against the pillow.

She begs him not to stop, the words coming out jumbled and desperate. He won't, because now that he knows he's really pleasing her, though sweat drips off his brow, he feels as if he could delay his own pleasure indefinitely. But as soon as he's sure of his restraint, he can feel her slickness grip him ever more firmly. His hand slides down between them to rub her in time with their bodies' meeting. He growls, his cock twitching inside of her, when his fingers touch where they're joined, but as loud as he is, he is nearly drowned out by a string of _pleases_. Ever courteous, dearest Sansa.

Through gritted teeth, he commands her, "Come love."

Her legs scramble for purchase in the sheets and then still, her body tightening like a strung bow. He wouldn't expect her to scream, when her release crashes over her, but the noise she makes is loud enough to be heard beyond this chamber and he swallows it with his mouth, kissing her frantically, sloppily in case she would have cause to regret her exclamation later.

He swears he feels what she feels in that moment, the thickness of him inside of her, the wave of breathless contractions, and his beard scratching her neck, and he hears her wordless love, hears it in the echoing chamber of his mind.

All of it has made his belly tauten and brought him to the point of his release, and he answers her pleasure, answers her love, swears it to her over and over, hotly against her ear, as he thrusts into her with increasing force, losing his rhythm as his world collapses in on one point. And when stars explode behind his eyes and he pulses inside her, the pleasure is so sharp, so intense that he can't breathe. It's sweeter than anything he ever imagined.

…

Sansa is his wife. She sleeps naked beside him, warm and breathing deeply. Out of all the things that have happened to him, this might be the most unexpected.

He can't sleep. Thoughts of the war that is to come, of dragons and fire, and the danger he has put Sansa in by bringing her here and making her his wife keep his mind churning. It was heady foolishness to think some hours earlier that he could keep her safe. The careless wish of a man eager to lose himself in his new wife's body.

They have lost their family, and he would promise to never be parted from her, as she has promised him, but how can he? How can he assure her that he will never leave her, when he must face Daenerys and her dragons? He can't even assure her that he will keep her safe, since he has only brought her closer to the danger at the gate, instead of leading her away from it the way Jaime Lannister promised.

He thinks of Ygritte, pierced through by an arrow, bleeding out in the snow, as he was helpless to stop it. They would make Sansa's death public, something macabre and humiliating, and he would already be dead and helpless once more. They might call him king now, but there is very little he can do to protect his own wife.

The visions that come to him are too dark, too terrible, and he stretches out his left arm to pull her closer into his chest, where he might feel her breath against his skin and tuck his nose into her red curls. As she settles against his chest, she murmurs, and he can tell he's disturbed her sleep.

"I'm sorry," he whispers. For everything.

He presses a kiss to her brow, as she stirs, and holds her fast against him, his hand in the small of her back nearly spanning the width of her, trying to still her movements, so that she might slip back into her peaceful slumber.

It is too late, however, and her hand glides over his chest to his face to caress his beard. Selfishness allows him to enjoy her touch, which calms his nerves, and he lets out a shaky breath. She doesn't speak, but the stroke of her hand, of her delicate fingers over his face makes the ugliness in his head quiet some. He does the rest, pushing out the darkness as best he can and focusing instead on the softness of her fingertips, the swell of her backside under his hand, and their feet tangled together underneath the furs. When he finally touches his forehead to hers, he's not as concerned about her hearing the content of his thoughts. They lay there, time expanding, and the silence is less haunting than it was when she was asleep. This is a shared silence, in which he can hear her affection for him and her belief in him.

She hums, her head tilting up to meet his gaze with her own bleary eyed one. "I fell asleep," she says as she rubs the heel of her hand into her eyes.

She looks younger, softened by a good sort of weariness.

He clears his throat. "You were worn out."

She hums again, shaking her head at him, but he can see that a smile tugs at the corners of her rosy lips.

Her hand skips over his brow, into his hair, her fingers light and soothing. "You can't sleep."

It isn't a question. She senses his disquiet, the way Ghost is also keen to it. If Ghost were here—and not banished for the night—he would pace and fitfully nudge Jon's hand with his snout.

"Tell me," she urges softly, and he would, he would share his burdens with her, but as they focus most forebodingly on her, he does not care to.

Lord Stark would not thank him for placing his daughter at risk.

Her brows draw together. "Are you thinking about the people who were not with us to toast today?" she asks, and he knows that his thoughts—at least some of them—are simply too loud to wall inside his mind.

"A little. What do you imagine they'd think of us?" Jon asks. "Your parents?"

He knows it is almost too painful a thing for her, for them both, to contemplate, but he can't help the turn of his thoughts. Maybe it is a pathetic habit of youth, when he would claim to be king of the Seven Kingdoms, but he is still trying to prove his worth, that despite being a bastard, he can be as good and true a son—good-son and not natural son though he might be—as Robb. He wants to be worthy of Sansa.

"My lady mother didn't know the truth of your birth, but my father did. They'd be happy knowing I was safe with you."

"Safe?" Her answer mocks his fears.

"Women aren't always safe, Jon. I wasn't always safe." She reminds him of a different kind of safety, and for the first time since before Aegon's death, he feels Petyr hanging between them, lurking in her mind. Petyr and other men as well. It's a smear of red and yellow, of fear and humiliation that floods his mind, shattered visions of her past, and he can see the setting most clearly—King's Landing. But it slips away, as she brings one leg between his, bringing herself that much closer so that their hips touch and her breasts flatten against his chest. "You're strong and brave and gentle, and that's what Father wanted for me, even when my head was turned by far lesser qualities."

She must hear more than just his uncertainty about Eddard Stark's approval, she must hear more of the darkness, because she whispers to him, as she rolls him onto his back and kneels over him, "It will be all right. Everything will turn out as it should."

He almost believes her, when he slips inside of her.

…

The morning hours are not yet upon them, when Sansa is dragged from the depth of her sleep by the rap of a fist upon the heavy door and the shout of a voice beyond. It isn't a woman's voice and not a man's either, but whoever it is means to wake them and fast.

"Jon," she says, pushing herself up in the furs.

His head lolls on the pillow, slowly turning towards her, and when his usually serious grey eyes open, they linger first upon her lips and then trail downwards. He wets his lips and she is aware of what he wants and she would give it gladly, but there is someone outside of the door.

"It sounds like your squire." Pulling the furs up to cover herself with one hand, she grasps his shoulder with the other, and says his name again more forcefully until he seems to be wise to the clamor.

He grunts, dragging his hand through his hair as he sits upright. The furs go with him and she can see the curve of his muscled…

She flushes, blood rushing to her cheeks, when Jon calls out for whoever it is to come in.

She isn't the only one to blush like a maid. When Jon's squire pokes his head around the door, his cheeks are enflamed as well. She forgets her own embarrassment, however, biting back a smile at the poor boy's disorder, while he stutters awkward apologies.

"What is it?" Jon interrupts, and she slides her hand down his arm, trying to drive the drowsy irritation from his voice.

The boy shifts, his eyes glued to the stone floor. "Pardon, but I heard tell there was a raven from the Dragon Queen, and I thought…" Her hand squeezes Jon's forearm. "Well, I thought it might look bad…"

"If I was _indisposed_ for yet another raven's message," Jon says, throwing the furs back and sliding from the bed. "Go on then. Step outside," he tells the boy, when he continues to stare down at the floor. "I'll be right behind you."

Jon stands there, his bare back to her, as the boy jumps backwards through the door. She watches Jon pull clothing off the floor, and suddenly, he is somber and careworn once more. The only proof of the man who moved above her last night is the mark of his teeth upon the inside of her thigh.

"What could she want?" Sansa asks, curling her legs underneath her.

He shakes his head and reaches out to tuck a mussed curl behind her ear. "Stay in bed, Sansa. At least until the sun's up."

But she knows she won't sleep. Not without Jon.


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter Rating**: T  
><strong>Chapter Word Count<strong>: 4759  
><strong>Chapter Summary<strong>: If Daenerys takes it into her head to feed Jon to her dragons, they're going to be short a king.  
><strong>Author's Note<strong>: If you're left at the end wanting to know now _now __**now **_what is going to happen, follow me on tumblr (user name is justadram) for updates. And if anyone is unhappy about Tyrion or Daenerys' portayal here, remember whose POV this is from. Thank you as always for all the comments, kudos, and favorites. You're the best readers!

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><p>Chapter Eighteen<p>

Sansa is not long behind Jon, but when she enters the room, where his council meets, it is evident that the air is already heated by disagreement. Half of the men present are red in the face and even Asha sits with her arms crossed and her face wrinkled by a scowl.

Most of the Northern men and some of Aegon's former bannermen mumble greetings to their new queen as she sweeps behind them. Sansa hopes this is a sign of the goodwill she attempted to cultivate at the feast the previous night or at very least that the new, more pressing problem has made them forget their disappointment in Jon's choice of wife for the time being. She nods at them all, but her eyes settle on Jon longer than the rest. She feels the thread between them pull, drawing her towards him. He looks so tired, so harried, and she wants to take his face in hers and kiss him until the furrows in his brow fade.

Jon stands, commanding that another chair be brought for his wife. "Next to me," he instructs, gesturing to the spot to his left, where Ghost lounges on the stone floor.

"Go on. Don't wait for me," she urges the assembled group, as Ghost moves for her and a chair is brought forth from a corner by a skinny serving boy. She murmurs her thanks to the lad and then begs them once more to continue. "Please, I have interrupted something, I fear."

"It's only that we await your opinion," offers her man, one she has brought from the Vale. There is some grumbling, as if not everyone has been awaiting her entrance. "I am hoping that you might argue our case, Your Grace."

Sansa takes her seat and smoothes her hands over her skirts. She donned her dark grey wool this morning, one of her simplest gowns, but one which hides the stains of travel rather better than her other ones that are somewhat more becoming. The ruff of fur around her neck is pure white and nothing short of striking, however—a gift, a wedding present, she found left for her by Jon. He has not missed that she wears it, for his eyes trace her form, lingering on the fur that she strokes one hand over. It reminds her of the way he looked up at her with hooded eyes last night from between her thighs, and she feels her cheeks flush like a maid.

She can't afford to think about that now.

"And what case is that, ser?"

"We are trying to convince the council that His Grace should reject Daenerys' latest overture."

"Reject?" Sansa asks, for most of these men were eager to seek a non-violent solution to their present dilemma only two days ago.

"Daenerys has requested that Snow attend upon her," Asha says flatly, pointing at Jon.

"She calls it an invitation," Jon corrects, sliding the missive that lay curled before him across the narrow distance that separates them.

Their fingers touch only for a moment, because Jon pulls his scarred hand away, steepling it with the other above the table. She can hear him draw a low breath, as she lifts the parchment and peers at the tiny writing. Reading what is written here, she begins to guess at what has caused dissension in the ranks.

"It does not sound as if Lady Greyjoy approves of the offer," Sansa says, looking up from the note. "Are you so eager for war?"

Sansa can see by the way Jon's shoulders straighten that she has expressed his view.

"It's never mattered to me how we won, so long as we won and turned our attention north once more."

"Then an opportunity to discuss a peaceful resolution cannot be a bad thing, surely. The sooner the better."

"I think you've read too much into a scrap of paper. There is no mention of peace talks in that _invitation_," Asha counters.

"She's right," Jon hedges. "There is no mention of peace here. But whatever her intentions, I hope I might be able to turn the meeting into a discussion of peace."

Asha says something low, something dismissive, which sounds very much like _hope_ to Sansa. It is a dangerous thing to hope, but then, they are already in great peril, which is precisely why Jon is willing to take the chance.

"You're not thinking of the king's honor. A king should not wait upon a queen," says the fleshy man, the same who spoke so passionately about a wedding between the Dragon Queen and Jon not two days ago.

Yes, of course. Honor. Men have killed themselves over far less.

"I don't believe anyone here would question the king's honor. One meeting could not possibly change that," Sansa says, reaching over to place her hand upon Jon's.

For a moment it seems as if she has cowed them, but finally someone is bold enough or stupid enough to contradict, and Sansa must stretch to look down the table so as to listen to yet another narrow minded view of the situation. "Of course Your Grace is without question honorable, but it looks bloody terrible."

It might be different if Daenerys was a man. Sansa itches to say this aloud—that for all their fear of the Dragon Queen, she is still but a woman to them—but it would only sow more discord. It is important that she help bind the men together, not tear them apart. She will keep quiet for now on the subject of their hypocrisy.

"How so, ser?" Jon asks, though he must know what it is about this situation that has the men so displeased.

"It'll look as if Your Grace is not her equal."

Sansa knew this would be the point of contention, and she also knows enough about men to wager that their heated arguments against Jon attending Daenerys have more to do with how these men feel about their own worth than the king's honor. No one cares to bend the knee to a man who will bend the knee to a woman. Perhaps they are concerned that he will not only accept her invitation, but that he will submit as well. And how far down the ranks would that then place all of them?

"I think perhaps it will look as if I'm willing to save my subjects from more war, more loss of life," Jon replies stiffly. "That isn't a reputation I'd be sorry to have."

That is just as she thought it would be. It is why Jon will make a truly good king. She squeezes his fingers, thanking him silently for being the man he's become, and then folds her hands in her lap once more.

"If it's peace you want, make her come to you for your bloody peace talks. You hold the throne, Your Grace."

"Can we host her dragons? Because, I imagine she'll want to bring them along," Asha says flatly.

"I believe there is a precedent in the not so distant past that we could draw upon to settle this," one of Aegon's bannermen offers, and all heads turn towards him. He was also against her marriage, but Sansa will not hold that against him if he has sense to offer the debate. "Renly and Stannis Baratheon met in order to parlay, did they not?"

"Outside the walls of Storm's End, ser. Stannis didn't summon his brother into his bloody tent."

"Although," Jon says, "Lord Stannis would have thought nothing of making such a demand."

"Not a demand, Snow, an _invitation_," Asha repeats again, and Sansa narrows her eyes at the woman, who insists on being impossible. Sansa doesn't know what has Asha so agitated, for she knows it has nothing to do with honor or the fear of falling under the sway of a powerful woman. "An invitation that could come with a price. Renly died if you lot don't remember. After their friendly fraternal parley."

"That was the Maid of Tarth's doing."

"Do you truly remember Stannis?" Asha presses. "Because based on my measure of the man, I have my doubts. Mark my words: he or that red witch of his had a hand in his brother's death."

"That witch brought His Grace back to life."

"And I still don't like her," Asha retorts before she comes nearly out of her chair, bending forward over the table with her fists balled until her steely eyes settle on Sansa.

"Look, I could give two figs about how it might appear to anyone should Snow pay the Dragon Queen a little visit. But if she takes it into her head to feed him to her dragons, we're going to be short a king. I'd think some of you would be concerned about that."

They all stand to lose—to lose and be killed, to be roasted alive—should Jon die, but Sansa has more of a stake in his kingship and the sanctity of his person than anyone else in the kingdom. Asha knows this. She plays upon this weakness. Sansa counts slowly to five, so as to keep her breathing even and not betray the panic she feels rising inside of her at the thought of Jon being at the mercy of the woman who has thought nothing of burning the villages of the land she would call hers.

The murmurs of the men in the room seem to agree that Daenerys Stormborn is not a person to be trusted, and that Jon best stay put. She wants to agree with them. She wants that with every fiber of her being. Love can make you weak or it can make you strong, and Sansa knows she must choose and choose wisely.

"You have never balked at the king risking his life before, Lady Grejoy. Not when he fought Aegon. Not when he approached the walls of King's Landing. Not anytime he took the field," Sansa points out, for while she would like to keep him safe, she would like to tell him to stay, she knows saving lives is what is most important to him and she will not speak out against his better instincts. She must use her skills to help him achieve his potential, not hold him back. "You have believed in him thus far."

"We've also never been this close to victory."

It is true. Jon could sit the throne. He could hold court in the Great Hall. King's Landing is his. And yet, the advantage is still not theirs. Not with dragons so close by.

Her man from the Vale scrubs his beard with his hand. "We might wait. The Martells have pledged their support. Even now they march north."

Jon shakes his head. "We don't have time for that. Daenerys is one good day's march away. This city could be a heap of scorched rubble by the time the Martells get here. A great number of lives could be saved if I act now. All of us might be saved," he says, appealing to their own sense of self-preservation, while he himself courageously offers to risk his own life. He is so good, so very, very good. Just the man her father would have wanted for her. Just the sort of man she must endeavor to deserve. "Let her think what she will by my coming."

Unconvinced, Asha kisses her teeth before asking, "And how do you mean to protect yourself from her treachery?"

"I mean to place my trust in her. Perhaps she will earn it."

It is clear to everyone that Jon's decision is final by the determined set of his jaw, but as Sansa has listened to the last rumbles of disagreement peter out, she has come to her own conclusion, one which she expects Jon to dislike as much as Asha dislikes his.

"I'll go with you."

Asha's barked laugh accompanies Jon's blank astonishment. "Daenerys will get her dragon claws in our king _and_ queen in the bargain. How incredibly expedient."

"What do you hope to accomplish, Your Grace?" her man asks, showing more deference than anyone else in the room is bound to give her, anyone but Jon, who appears too shocked to speak, even to speak out against her plan.

"I do no one any good if Jon is the victim of Daenerys' treachery. So, there is no reason to keep me safely locked up here," Sansa explains, and she can see Jon's throat working, when she speaks of her own unimportance.

She shapes her argument with care, for she knows very well that even with Jon dead, she could rally men to her side, she could keep the War of the Dragons alive, so long as she carries Jon's child. And she might. It is not an impossibility. Twice they were together last night, and were there not vital things at hand, she would be with him thrice more today before the sun reached its highest point. But while she nurses a hope that his seed might have taken root, she knows it is unlikely.

It is the first time that she has not drunk moon tea after coupling, and the only time she has desired a child to result from the congress. As Jon pressed his face into her breast, having exhausted himself a second time, she carded her fingers through his hair, imagining a little boy as good as Jon. For though she paid him little heed, when they were children, Sansa knows that it was very rarely Jon who received a scolding from their nurse or their lord father—Jon was always dutiful and kind. She pictured a little boy, who looked every bit a Stark, every bit like his father, and she thinks she'd like that best of all. Even a boisterous, impossible little girl would be so welcome. Someone Jon could teach to wave a sword and fight imagined—not real, never real for their children—threats.

But life is not a song, and though she might want to carry Jon's heir already, the chances of that are slim. So she buries the hope, smothering the sharp pang of longing with gentle words and an arched brow.

"And it might do some good to have me along. Tyrion Lannister was good to me, and he is Daenerys' Hand. He might listen to me. Daenerys might even listen to me."

"You're a traitor to her, same as all the rest of us," Asha reminds her with a sweep of her hand to indicate the whole of the room.

"Yes, I'm a Stark born, but a Targaryen wed. We might talk woman to woman." Jon slowly shakes his head, and she can feel his uneasiness seep under her skin, making her own stomach twist and churn. "She might be less eager to submit Jon to the flames if his wife accompanies him. It certainly wouldn't appear _honorable_. An invitation implies her guests' safety."

"You mean to make this meeting a little family reunion then?" Asha asks.

"I might just. She is your aunt, is she not, Jon?"

"So it would seem."

"Then you might present me to this aunt of yours."

…

They ride for Daenerys' camp, the horses' hooves beating out a tattoo of danger and hope and fear. They ride not far enough for Jon's liking. The Dragon Queen is close indeed, and despite the peril that possibly awaits them, he thinks her proximity alone makes this a chance worth taking. He only wishes he was taking it alone, and not risking Sansa as well.

But Sansa is difficult to persuade once she has set her mind upon something. This is the woman he has wed. She is not the compliant, courteous little girl he once knew, who wanted only to please. He's glad of it, glad she is his partner even in this, though the muscles in his back have tightened painfully during the ride in anticipation of the danger that might await his wife in Daenerys' camp. His wife, who he has only known twice, but whose lips he can still feel pressed against the pulse in his neck.

They ride with guards, guards who are required to await Jon and Sansa's return _outside_ of Daenerys' tent. That much is made abundantly clear.

"Do you mistrust the queen's intentions?" a man with a face much more scared than his own demands gruffly, when Jon halts at the entrance to the tent, as his men are stopped behind him.

"Of course not," Sansa says, as she slides her arm through Jon's. She speaks ever so gently, though he can feel a tension in her arm that belies her tone. "Ghost comes with us, however. Only because he is never separated from us. You know what it is to have a good hunting dog, they become like a member of the family."

The man's eyes dart to Ghost, whose lips curl in a silent growl. He is more than one head taller than the large hunting dogs kept in Winterfell's kennel. No one could mistake him for a dog.

The man is no simpleton, for he states he'd rather not be left alone with Ghost, which he knows enough to call a direwolf, and lets all three of them enter—unaccompanied by steel, but unmolested—Ghost padding at Sansa's side near enough that her skirts brush his side. Jon can only hope that no one inside this tent will take it into their head to come too close to Sansa. He's certain that though he has been stripped of his men, Ghost will rip the throat out of anyone who dares to approach Sansa with malevolent intent.

Jon's teeth might not be as sharp, but he swears he could do the same if need be.

The tent is grander than anything he has ever seen on campaign. Silks drape the ceiling, woven rugs soften the tread of their feet, and lanterns with colored glass hang low to light their way, for though it is day, the sun is obscured by the fall of snow that is heavy enough to remind him of home.

Sansa said it was a good omen. _Her home has been one of sun and fire, Jon. Ours is of snow and ice._

When they approach the ebony bench upon which she sits, Daenerys does not look a child of fire. Her hair is as white as the snow that falls outside and she is wrapped in a black bear fur that make her appear Northerner enough that Jon doubts Sansa's words of comfort.

"Jon Snow, I presume," she says, her violet eyes seeming to take the measure of him, as he and Sansa come to stand before her.

Then, he has sized her up as well, and though she is beautiful—nothing like the scaled, fanged beast of his nightmares—and she is small and wears no armor and has no sword at her side, he knows better than to be lulled into a sense of false security. She looks as powerful as she does feminine. Her strength is not so different from his wife's, except Sansa has been raised under the example of Lord and Lady Stark, who had the greatest respect for this land and its people, for their responsibility to those who were below them. Jon suspects there was no one to teach Daenerys to think of Westeros as anything but a prize to be won back, a lost possession.

There is a hunger in her eyes. A hunger that knows how close she is to victory, to claiming the Iron Throne and King's Landing and the whole of Westeros. If she's looking to sate herself upon the flesh of the land, he doubts victory will feed her, any more than walking unharmed through the gates of King's Landing to claim the city filled his need.

Sansa, only Sansa can do that.

"And my wife," speaks the man that sits off to the side, a man he knows, though he looks rather worse for wear since he last saw him. "This is an unexpected pleasure."

"Tyrion," Sansa says, and she sounds perfectly comfortable, perfectly at ease in this very foreign tent standing before a woman who would take the throne from him and a man who was once her husband.

Of course, Sansa says that he was kind to her, but Jon has his doubts. He has his doubts about any Lannister—being better acquainted with the Kingslayer did not change his opinion of them in general—and he knows that it was a marriage not of her choosing, pressed upon her by that family, when she was still but a child. Sansa is so very talented at hiding her fears, hiding everything that she wants to keep secreted away from prying eyes that Jon can't be sure that she is truly at peace facing Tyrion Lannister or only just pretending.

Daenerys turns her gaze on the scarlet clad half man. "This is your little bride?"

"This is my wife," Jon interrupts through clenched teeth before Tyrion can respond, and Sansa's hand tightens on his arm, warning him to stop. "Queen Sansa."

Daenerys looks almost amused at his outburst, her lips quirking. "_Queen_ Sansa, is it? That's rather a bold claim, considering you are my brother's bastard at best and an imposter at worst."

"Bold and rather baffling, as I quite remember my wedding to the soft-spoken Lady Sansa. Do you not recall?" Tyrion asks of Sansa, reaching up to rub the place where his nose should be.

"Yes, I recall. But we both know we were not truly married."

She has said this once before to Jon—_Our marriage was not a true one_—and because she did not willingly consent, that is proof enough for Jon that no annulment was needed. But, he rather thinks she meant more by her statement than that. If she meant to confess to him that their marriage went unconsummated, then this might be what she means at least in part when she says that Tyrion was kind to her. That is what he has suspected, but Jon can't bring himself to probe further. She can tell him the truth of her past if she so chooses, and otherwise he will not trouble her about it, lest she think that he might think less of her for it.

Tyrion must know her truth, for though he sighs heavily, he says, "I suppose, Your Grace, that I can't rightly call her my wife, although adding an accusation of bigamy to the tale would no doubt make for a better song, when all is said and done. The bards appreciate such things, if nothing else."

"Oh, there will be plenty to be sung about," Daenerys says, once again eyeing them up like they are a potential meal, but Sansa does not wilt under her gaze.

"No doubt," Tyrion agrees before turning his mismatched eyes back on Sansa.

"You have proved a fickle wife, but based on some rumblings I've heard, I think you might just provide me with some helpful information now that you're here. Unless Your Grace would like to question Jon Snow first?"

Daenerys gestures, as if she is happy to yield the floor, and perhaps she truly is. Maybe she owes her presence here in Westeros as much to Tyrion as to her dragons. Jon knows not.

Tyrion drums his fingers on the arm of the small gilded chair topped with a carved lion head, one that has clearly been made to accommodate his unusually diminutive stature. "I fear my brother is dead."

Sansa replies, "He is," before Jon can stop her.

This might not be the best way to begin their peace talks by angering the Hand of the Queen. Jon doesn't speak his warning, but she must hear it, for she turns to him and says, "He should know the truth."

"Yes, I should. And my sister?"

"She is dead as well."

Sansa says it with the same undisturbed calm as her pronouncement of the Kingslayer's death, though Jon knows she feels very differently about the loss of the man with the golden hand than she does about his twin's demise.

Tyrion's stubby fingers stop their incessant drumming. "You're becoming quite accomplished at killing Lannisters."

Sansa pulls her arm free of Jon and takes a step forward, Ghost at her heels. "I had nothing to do with either of their deaths, and I would have never harmed a hair on Jaime's head."

She speaks quickly. Too quickly. It would seem that her composure is not entirely unflappable. His death, the death of the man who came upon her first in the Vale, is still too fresh, too much of a wound for her not to boil over when Tyrion heaps fuel upon the fire.

There is a stab of jealousy in Jon's gut that makes him stare down at his feet.

"Ah. Jaime is it? Is that true, Jon Snow? She was very fond of my brother?"

Jon fears he could use more of Sansa's skill at hiding behind masks, but she saves him, answering before he must summon words in response to the taunt. "He was very good to me."

How good Jon doesn't know. He won't ever ask her about that either. He has no right.

Tyrion smiles widely enough that Jon can see where he is missing some teeth—visual proof that Jon is not the only man to lose patience with the youngest member of House Lannister.

"Well, Jaime always had a weakness for his sisters."

"I think that's enough," Jon warns the man, as he crosses his arms over his chest, for though Tyrion might have been kind to Sansa in the past, she is his to protect now.

Daenerys shifts on her bench, her eyes darting from Jon to Sansa. "I liked you better, Lady Sansa, before you professed affection for the Kingslayer."

"I didn't expect you to like me at all."

Sansa lowers her hand to Ghost's head and strokes, perhaps attempting to calm herself before she speaks more levelly, "Jaime Lannister committed terrible crimes, but killing your mad father was not one of them."

Tyrion's brows rise, looking as if he might even be proud of Sansa's gall, and the knowing look he proceeds to give Daenerys might indicate that he's told the young queen as much himself. If he meant to save his brother, he would have had to tell the queen of the Mad King's crimes, he would have had to justify his brother's actions.

Daenerys gives a flick of her wrist. It is a dismissive and imperious gesture. "Well, it has solved one problem between you and me," she says, looking down her nose at her Hand, and whatever Tyrion might think about the solution to the problem of his brother, he merely inclines his head in response.

"This meeting was not supposed to be about Tyrion's wife. She is not the reason I invited you here," Daenerys says, leaning forward towards the three of them with her hand gripping her knee beneath her skirts. The fur around her shoulders must be warm, but her gown is made of silk. It is not a gown made for winter. And yet, her cheeks are rosy, her lips look almost kissed, and her body betrays no shiver. Perhaps she burns hot from the inside as well, as he does since the day he burned and was brought back to life. "So then, why have you brought your wife with you, _Jon Snow_?" Daenerys demands.

He must begin to think of her not as a monster, not as something foreign, not as a great evil, but as blood, as his kin. Sansa was right as always when she spoke of making this a family reunion. It won't make fighting Daenerys any easier if that is what it comes to—he knows what it is to slay kin and the memory of Aegon's blood still stains the backs of his eyelids—but it might save them now, for he also knows what it feels like to feel inhuman and come back around to being a man once more.

"So that we all might speak as family. So that we might put an end to this war and save this land from the greater dangers that await us all."

"Family?" she asks, narrowing her eyes. "I'm not certain I can claim you as family, Snow. How do you like fire?"


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter Rating**: M for sexual content  
><strong>Chapter Word Count<strong>: 4251  
><strong>Chapter Summary<strong>: Jon is more at home in the ice. But fire seems to like him.  
><strong>Author's Note<strong>: Still doing my best to keep with my biweekly posting schedule, but I've also been posting teasers to hold folks over, which you can read if you follow me on tumblr (user name justadram). Hold all judgment of those characters wherein whom seem _unhinged_. Thank you as always for all the comments, kudos, and favorites. I seem to be getting a wealth of _you've converted me to Jon/Sansa comments_, and I must admit those are my favorite, but I love you all.

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><p>Chapter Nineteen<p>

How does he like fire? Not much at all. He is more at home in the ice. But fire seems to like him.

Except for the epitome of fire, the white hot Targaryen, who sits before him. This woman, who is his closest living kin, clearly loathes his very existence. Whether she dislikes him more as an actual claimant to the throne or a pretender, he can't say, but he can almost see the flames behind her eyes—the flames to which she would like to submit him.

"I survive it if that's what you mean," he responds, as Daenerys stares at him coolly from her bench.

She can set her trio of fire breathing dragons upon him. She can light a bonfire and tie him to a post inside its burning circle. Fire he is certain he can endure. It is other dangers he is less certain of surviving—jagged teeth, shining swords, a drop of poison in a goblet, or the loss of the woman who stands beside him.

"He's walked through fire. More than once," Sansa says, slipping her arm through his once more, and now that she stands resolute beside him, he doesn't know how he would have done this without her.

She is a comfort, but as she speaks, she sounds proud of him, as if this strange ability of his to walk untouched through flame actually requires any true skill, and Jon almost smiles in spite of Daenerys' blistering threat.

Daenerys wraps her hands around the edge of her bench, her knuckles turning slowly white. "Well, if it's true, that's certainly a neat little trick."

"You know it's more than a conjurer's trick. It's proof enough that he is your nephew, Rhaegar's son," Sansa asserts.

"Perhaps it is. Although, I wouldn't say he looks it," Daenerys says, her mouth turning down in a small frown. "We Targaryens are not usually black of hair and grey eyed. It is said Aegon looked more Targaryen than you. Of all those claiming to be my kin, you appear the least likely to be an actual dragon."

"I make a better Targaryen," Tyrion says, reaching up to stroke the blond and black scruff that covers his jaw.

Jon thinks Tyrion would make a rather unfortunate Targaryen, but Daenerys finds some amusement in her Hand's pronouncement, and nods her agreement, saying, "Indeed."

Tyrion might make a questionable Targaryen, but in truth Jon looks no more like his house than the dwarf does. No, when Jon sees his scarred face in the looking glass, it is Eddard Stark who looks back, not some Targaryen prince, who he has been told loved his harp more than his sword and who brought women to tears with his songs. He looks nothing like this finely boned, petite woman with silvery, elaborately braided hair and violet eyes, Rhaegar's sister, whom he should call aunt.

"Shall we put him to the test?" Daenerys asks of Tyrion.

Tyrion has no chance to assent or object. Jon means not to let anyone give their opinion on this matter before he has had his say.

"I've heard that you have performed this trick on occasion yourself. So, I'll submit to it only if you will."

Daenerys narrows her eyes at him, the white of her lashes almost obscuring her pupils from view. "Yes, I have. However, I have no reason to prove myself to you, Jon Snow. Your birth is questioned, not mine. For all I know, you heard my story and claimed it for your own."

"I died and was reborn in the flames long before I became familiar with the tales of your fire walk. But none of that matters. I didn't come here to receive your approval. I too have no reason to prove myself."

He has received approval from those who matter—the men of the North, his brothers at arms, those he has fought with as he has moved ever farther south, and Sansa, his wife—and what he hopes to accomplish today has little to do with proving his parentage. His parentage was so long a mystery to him that he is accustomed to not relying on it as a crutch the way other men base their worth on their house.

Daenerys arches one fine brow. "Is that so? You suggest that I liberally set aside the matter of your dubious birth. Did you take this familial tact with Aegon? Or did you see fit to put _him_ to a test?"

The Dragon Queen's words come ever quicker, and it takes no great acuity in reading people to see that her patience is wearing as thin as the ice that is just now forming at the edges of the Blackwater as the winds of winter howl ever faster each night when the sun disappears beneath the horizon.

"You might thank Jon for his handling of Aegon, instead of attempting to shame him for it," Sansa says, and Jon turns his head just enough to see that she wears a calculating smile he knows isn't really hers. It is a mask she wears, one of many.

"I might have, yes. But, my Hand knew this young man, who saw fit to call himself Aegon Targaryen. Did you not?"

Tyrion nods, his too short arms crossing over his chest. "Yes, Your Grace. We traveled together."

"And what was it that you said about the youth?"

"That he might prove to be a good consort."

"Yes, so you did. Before he ever emerged out of the ether and claimed himself to be Aegon, I used to muse that he and I might have married should he have lived. He was closer to my age, you know, than my brother. Perhaps I would have welcomed a marriage between myself and this Aegon. It was not bad advice, I think."

Tyrion continues to praise Jon's dead brother, the third dragon, musing, "He was well educated and intelligent, handsome with the appearance of a Targaryen. And dutiful, the boy was dutiful."

Jon wishes Tyrion would stop, for he knows something good could have come of him.

"An idealistic youth," Daenerys adds, as she folds her hands in her lap. "Just a boy playing at swords. And you see, I'm rather uneasy about husbands, who intend on trying to control _me_, so, it didn't sound too terrible a prospect. Until you killed him."

It was the possibility Sansa warned them of—the uniting of Aegon and Daenerys' forces through marriage—when they made their decision to chase down Aegon's forces. It would have been a front nigh on impossible to defeat. Still, Jon can't bring himself to congratulate himself on Aegon's death. It saved men's lives, and for that he is glad, but the cost will ever weigh upon him.

"I would have rather not killed my brother, but he would not see reason. I'm hoping that our conversation here today will be more fruitful."

Daenerys smiles, but her words do not match the spread of her rosy lips. "Do you threaten me, Snow?"

"It is only the truth. As their king, I worry only for the people of Westeros, for their future. Their welfare depends upon the success of our talks."

Daenerys sighs. "And you insist then upon being my brother's bastard, on claiming what is mine and mine alone."

He's used to being called a bastard. If she means it as an insult, if she means to make him angry and foolish by calling him what he is, her words are wasted.

"I insist that either your dragons be put to better purposes than conquering a people that are in need of aid not attack or that you turn them away from this land forever."

Daenerys stands. Her height is not impressive, but her back is straight and her arms stiff at her sides with her hands balled into tight fists. "No one tells me what to do with my dragons. No one."

He can feel Sansa draw breath beside him before she speaks, "Someone must. What you have done thus far with them inspires no confidence."

"The daughter of a traitor. Traitor to House Targaryen, traitor to House Baratheon. There is no honor in your blood. And you think you might judge me?"

Daenerys' words are cutting, but Sansa speaks without alarm, "Everyone is judging your actions. You might think on that before you make your next move. You might win the day, but to be surrounded by enemies for the rest of your reign would be a very perilous position in which to live."

"If I have to burn you Starks out of King's Landing, I will. The people will welcome me, their true queen, once I sit the throne."

"Jon accepted your invitation in the hopes that we might discuss a way to avoid war, to avoid more unnecessary deaths. Not to be threatened with flames."

Jon will not turn his eyes from the Dragon Queen, but he can see that Tyrion has also stood from his carved seat and that he has taken a step towards Sansa. Tyrion looks from his queen to Jon's wife, his attentions swinging from one woman to the other, when he best take care of the direwolf, who stands guard with teeth bared at Sansa's skirts.

"The only way we might avoid war, Jon Snow, is if you admit that you are a pretender to the Iron Throne. The only way we might avoid further loss of life is if you hand over what is mine. The Seven Kingdoms are mine by right and it is my duty to reclaim them as my own."

She doesn't understand duty at all. Aegon understood better. Aegon, who he was forced to slay with his own hand. They might have ruled together, shared the burdens of kingship if he had been counseled to accept Jon's offer. They could have defeated Daenerys together.

"Your duty is to the people you rule, and you have served them thus far by burning their homes and what little food they have to survive this winter," Jon spits back, for when he thinks of the old, the enfeebled by frozen fields that bring forth no bounty, the women and children, and the farmers armed with nothing but hoes and pitchforks, who have been driven from their homes or burned alive inside of them, he can summon as much rage as any Targaryen.

He is not the father of dragons, but he is not unaccompanied. There is the sigil of the house to which he feels the most kinship. There is Ghost, who inches forward, the thick fur on the back of his neck bristling in silent warning.

"Your Grace," Tyrion barks, his small hand held out, as if it might stop Ghost's approach.

"What?" Daenerys demands, her face going from pale milk to an angry red. "He has threatened me in my own tent. He insists on claiming the throne for his own. What would you advise, _Lannister_?"

Tyrion shifts on his feet, looking rightly cowed. He has been useful to Daenerys, no doubt, but the Lannisters were traitors to the House Targaryen, just like the Starks were, and perhaps the Dragon Queen is hard-pressed to forget that fact. Particularly if he seems to stand in the way of her all consuming desire to take back what she believes must be hers at all cost.

"I'd advise that we all practice some restraint. Primarily the restraining of this beast, which seems to have developed a sudden hunger for my tender flesh. If you please, Lady Sansa?"

Jon's jaw still works and he is half tempted to command Ghost otherwise, but Sansa extends her steady hand palm up.

"Ghost, to me," Sansa says, and her voice betrays no tremble, making her the outwardly calmest person standing inside this elaborate tent.

As Ghost retreats, refusing to put his back to the dwarf, Sansa kneels down, her arm slipping free of Jon's. Her skirts billowing about her, she buries her hands in Ghost's fur, leaning into his side and murmuring unintelligible words of comfort. They are low, intended for Ghost alone, but Jon finds that he breathes deeper as well as a result of her efforts.

"He doesn't like the tone of your voice," Sansa says, looking up at Daenerys. "And you best stay back," she adds, casting a look at Tyrion, who still has his arm outstretched.

The arm falls to his side, as he says, "I am only trying to help."

"Just who are you trying to help?" Daenerys asks with a sharp exhalation.

Tyrion smiles, exposing the gaps in his teeth once more, seemingly recovering his own veneer of composure—a talent that no doubt makes him more politically savvy than most hot headed men, who fills the ranks at court. "Let's see if we can salvage something from this." Tyrion directs his mismatched eyes at Jon. "What did you hope to accomplish today, Snow?"

"An end to war."

"And you, Your Grace?" he asks, twisting on his feet to look up at the woman, whose bosom still heaves with barely constrained fury inside her low golden gown.

"The same: an end to war."

Tyrion rubs his jutting forehead, as if warding away a headache. "Well, that is something then. Only, it seems as if there are different notions of how to achieve that end."

"Can we not discuss it civilly?" Sansa asks from her place on the tent's floor.

"Yes, of course," Daenerys says, her head lifting. "I'm perfectly willing to discuss all manner of things. I'm even willing to demonstrate my magnanimous mercy towards those who I might rightly call family once they have proved themselves as such and their loyalty to my reign."

"The Queen can be very generous to those who serve her," Tyrion says, sketching an awkward little bow, which Daenerys does not turn to admire.

And perhaps she can be, when she so chooses. She has certainly been generous with Tyrion Lannister, and if she means to ensure his safety or even just Sansa's safety, it would not be a bad point from which to begin their negotiations. Except that Jon can't forget.

"Given what you have done to this land and its people already, I can't in good conscience hand over the throne to you."

Daenerys blinks back at him, her mouth a thin line. "I've only done what is necessary to take back what is mine."

The Targaryens are mad, and perhaps he suffers from madness as well. But Daenerys' madness, her consuming drive to take the throne with blood and fire, makes her unfit. Of that Jon is sure. She might be a good woman, a good wife and mother, a good mistress, a good person, but with the fate of the smallfolk in her hands, she has proven herself to be a conqueror first. Winter is upon them, Others and wights bear down from the North only as far behind as a hard freeze and a few moon's turn. These are points that Jon meant to press upon Daenerys, but now he is certain she is not ready to listen. Her only thoughts are for her throne.

"And that is why I can't discuss the throne with you, no matter how you might vow to be generous with myself or my wife. There are more important things at hand than a throne or our own personal safety."

He need not worry how his words affect Sansa, for she stretches out a hand to brush his fingers and entwine them with her own. With her hand in his, he can feel the pulse of her pride in him, warm and steady.

"Can't or won't?" Daenerys asks.

"Can't."

It would be a betrayal to bargain with her, a betrayal of the people he has promised to protect.

"I think we're finished here," Sansa says, coming to her feet.

"It would seem so," Tyrion agrees with a grimace.

"Yes, we've wasted enough words for one day," Daenerys says, taking her seat though her body remains as tense as a tightly strung bow.

Jon can only think of one thing to say in parting. "I'll expect you." Too soon, no doubt. Within the day even, Jon expects to hear the stomp of Unsullied feet outside the gates and the screech of dragons overhead.

"Yes, you best expect me. You best return to your feeble fortifications, Jon Snow. For dragon fire is a fearsome thing."

…

The council has sat and plans—useless though they might prove to be—have been made. Jon's men and the men of King's Landing both young and old are on the walls, preparing for the attack from land and sky they know now with sickening certainty is coming. They prepare to defend themselves, but they prepare for death too. They are all preparing for it in their own ways. That is why she is here with Jon.

Night has been upon them for several hours, and when Sansa finally urged that Jon retire, so as to be rested for whatever the following day might bring, no one but Jon himself seemed to think it a bad notion. He would have been on the walls with the men if given a real choice. Instead, he is here before her, halfway undressed until he abandoned the process to slump in a chair. Here he sits in his bedchamber, bare to the waist with his head in his hand and his legs stretched out before him.

Sansa walks to the window and undoes the latch to let in some cold night air. More than that comes in, as she pushes open the window: snowflakes float towards her, sticking in her lashes and her unbound hair. Her eyes slip closed, when she breathes in the fresh air with relief. She feels one flake land and melt upon her lips, and as she pulls her lips through her teeth, she thinks it tastes of home.

A fire blazed in the twin hearths of this room long before either of them retired to it, and although it is winter and the air is cold enough to freeze the water in the fintware basin on the sideboard, Sansa wants no reminder of flames and heat. Though when she opens her eyes to look out at the jagged silhouette of the scarred city before her, she sees incontrovertible truth that they are far from home, the bitter air ghosting over her skin is as close as she can come to the halls of Winterfell. She needs it, and she is certain that Jon draws strength not from glowing coals but snow and ice as well.

With the temperature of the room blessedly dropping, she walks—her slippers softly rustling the rushes on the stone floor—to Jon. Standing between his spread legs, her dressing gown brushes the inside of his black breeches and she gazes upon his low hung head. The candles gutter in the draft, casting dancing shadows over his downturned face. She runs her fingers through his hair, pushing it back away from his brow and tilting his head, so that his hand falls to his lap. Clouded, melancholic eyes look up at her.

"Oh, Jon," she murmurs, drawing back.

She shrugs, letting her gown slip from her shoulders to pool on the ground in a rippling puddle of blue silk.

Sansa's serving girl undressed her and brushed out her hair in her own chamber, but as soon as she was left alone, she made her way through chilled corridors to the king's bedchamber. This is not a night to spend alone. If it is to be her last, she wants to be with Jon. She needs Jon to be with her. In her.

Gathering up her linen shift in one hand, she gently pushes with the other at the center of his solid chest, pressing his shoulders back into the chair, so that she might climb into it with him. She kneels on either side of his thighs, insinuating herself nearly as close as she can get to her silent husband. She'd slip into him if she could and smooth away his pain and fear and self doubt.

His warm hands settle on her hips, as she sinks into his lap. She knows he is aware of her, but his eyes still appear dead and empty.

"She had no intention of listening to me. None at all."

"No," she agrees, brushing the hair off his brow, which has curled over it once more, defiantly refusing to stay in place, and places a gentle kiss there to the pale slightly chapped skin she exposes. "But Tyrion heard you. He heard us both, Jon. I'm sure of it."

"You think that will make a difference?"

She stirs in his lap and he draws breath, his chest expanding as his hands skate up to her waist, dragging her shift higher with them. Another inch and he might see that she donned no smallclothes before coming to him tonight.

She dips forward and whispers her answer against his full lips, "We'll know tomorrow."

Tomorrow the world might end in flames, but while snow dances in through the window, they have tonight.

Jon must understand, for it takes no further encouragement on Sansa's part to get him to forget their worries in favor of what comfort they might give each other. His lips chase hers, his tongue slides over her lips, between them, stroking her tongue, dragging a noise from the back of her throat, which makes him hold her more firmly against himself.

"My beautiful girl," he says, as he abandons her lips for her neck, marking a hot trail down her throat to the hollow notch. "You are so brave."

Brave by necessity. Made brave by circumstances, for she knows she was not always brave. Jon, she thinks, was born brave. She might not deserve him, but he wants her, and that is enough.

His hands trace her body, never slipping beneath her shift, as if he is too reverent to touch her directly, but the rasp of the linen over her sensitive skin and the heat of his touch seeping through makes Sansa rock against him, pushing her chest to his, trapping his hand as he palms her breast. He smiles—his smile lights his face, even this sly, self-satisfied smile that barely quirks his lips—and her stomach flips, a funny buoyed feeling filling her at the thought of bringing him pleasure.

She can do more.

Her fingers dart to the laces on his breeches, moving quickly to release him and have him in her hand. She hasn't had time to touch him, to learn him, and it's still so heart stutteringly new, when she wraps her hand around him and his head falls forward with a moan. He is already hard, but he grows more so in her hand until he twitches with every stroke and Jon is mumbling discourteous, uncouth oaths into her neck.

It isn't what she would imagined as a young girl, when she lay in bed and stared up at the silk that draped her bed and dreamt of being a lady wife, but Jon's tight fisting of her hair and his colorful words of encouragement make her hot with need. She likes how unwound he becomes with her, how he seems to lose his cares and become single-minded and unregretful. It makes her bold.

His pleasure becomes hers as she rubs herself along him and then she is balancing herself with her hands on his shoulders and sliding down his length.

As she rocks them together and he slides within her, he seems to approve of the slow pace she has set, his hands slowly rubbing over her shift to map her back, the round of her backside, her thighs. Until they settle high on her legs, his thumbs hovering close to where they are joined, and he looks up.

"Show me how you like to be touched."

Sansa is no maid. She has experience with men beyond that which this marriage has given her. But she has never been asked such a thing, and she doesn't know if she has the sort of answer he is looking for, because until there was Jon, until she came to his bed and was under his touch, she wouldn't have known what she liked. What she liked or wanted had never been foremost.

He looks at her with dark eyes, his lips wet from their kissing.

There is only one answer. "By you. I liked to be touched by you."

He growls, fisting her shift and pulling it over her head, baring her to his mouth to his hands, bending her to him, as he licks his way to her breasts and pulls at her nipples with his mouth until she falters in her steady rise and fall and is reduced to whimpering and a desperate angling of her hips to feel more.

"You feel," he says, his hands sliding over her body to touch where they join, "so good. You make me feel so good, Sansa." She tucks her head into his neck, feeling her cheeks heat at his touch, at his words. "Is it too much to say that? Should I not say that?"

She shakes her head no. No, it's not too much. It's perfect. She could listen to his hurried confessions for a lifetime and it would never be enough.

But they still have tonight.


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter Rating**: T  
><strong>Chapter Word Count<strong>: 2747  
><strong>Author's Note<strong>: Waffled on this one, because it's short. Shorter than the chapters typically are. But, ultimately, it felt like this was the most impactful place to begin and end the chapter. I've been posting teasers, which you can read on tumblr (username justadram)

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><p>Chapter Twenty<p>

Despite shrinking bellies that in these cold days rarely are filled enough to satisfy the hunger of fighting men, Sansa spies very few people around her bringing the lumpy, unsweetened and unsalted porridge to their lips. Hers has gone cold. Jon's sits untouched as well. Nevertheless, it is important that she and Jon keep to routine and present a united picture of calm in the face of the impending battle for which they all wait in the hall's oppressive silence.

They must come to the same conclusion, because Jon turns to Sansa at the same time she looks to him to urge him to eat, and she can see the words about to form on his lips, hears his soft plea in her mind. It's enough to almost bring a smile to them both, but not quite.

She looks back down and drags her spoon through the bowl, making troughs in her rations without ever lifting the spoon to her pale lips. Jon at least brings one oversized bite to his mouth. It is quiet enough in the thin crowd of the room that she can hear him swallow.

Most of the men are already manning the walls, since Daenerys' troops were spotted just beyond the horizon as dawn broke over the Blackwater Bay. A wall of Unsullied armed with spears and swords approaches, marching across the land as relentlessly as the winter that has closed in upon them. They say they are not men, but they fight with an intensity, with a fearlessness that most real men could never hope to duplicate. They fight in lockstep. Their heads topped with spikes. All completely foreign to the land Daenerys claims is hers by birth and right.

Sansa is certain Tyrion heard Jon and that he was not beyond reasonable discussion if only his queen would have allowed it. She could see it in Tyrion's eyes, and she prayed to the gods that he might have some success in cooling Daenerys' fires. But still the Dragon Queen's forces come.

Unsullied soldiers and scaled dragons. Scouts have not yet seen the beasts, but surely they are coming.

Sansa swallows hard, staring down into her porridge. She should be eating, she knows, to keep up her strength and to maintain the appearance of composure, but she loses the battle with herself and pushes the bowl away with shaking hands. Hopefully a servant will clear it, because the sight of it suddenly turns her stomach. If she tipped the bowl over, the insides would spill out just like the contents of a man's gut cut from breastbone to belly.

She lowers her hands down into her lap, resting them in her skirts so that no one will see how they have begun to quiver. No one must know how very afraid she is. She fears for Jon, for all of them, for every last man and woman in King's Landing. But no one must know. As their queen, she must be strong so that they might have the courage to be stronger.

Jon's hand settles over hers, his calloused fingers wrapping around her clasped hands, stilling their quaking.

Jon knows. He must feel how her heart beats too fast and how her mind conjures images of blood red, Targaryen red spilt on a field of Stark white.

But that is weakness. She commands herself not to picture Jon as anything but victorious. Her eyes slip shut and she pictures it. He stands upon the walls unburnt and unbroken. They cheer him. They call his name in ecstatic triumph. They carry him through the streets, so that he might sit the Iron Throne with his black curls once and for all held down by a crown. The throne he will sit was made for the Targaryen kings of old, but the crown he will don is pure Stark in hammered bronze and iron spikes. Ghost will sit at his feet and Westeros will bend the knee to the Prince That Was Promised. She will be the first to set the example, giving the North and her allegiance to her king and lord husband.

A bald headed man leans between them, interrupting the picture she purposefully paints in her mind, and Sansa thinks a servant has come to spare her the sight of her discarded porridge, except no hand outstretches and the head inclines to be closer to Jon's, to speak low into his ear, "The troops are within sight of the walls at Lion Gate, Your Grace."

Sansa's breath catches in her throat, but she keeps her face still, giving no signal to those who surround them of her distress. She owes them her strength.

Jon mumbles his thanks, the man straightens up, backing away, and Jon's hand tightens around hers.

This is the moment of their parting. They said their goodbyes last night. They whispered promises in breathless pleasure and sealed them with their kisses. He swore to protect her. To never let any harm come her way or an unwanted hand leave its mark. He swore it wouldn't always be like this with death lurking around every corner. She vowed she would love him without regrets even if they never knew peace. He promised her a search for her siblings, whom she'd long ago given up for dead. He promised her a world that would be safe for their family. She swore he was more than enough even if he was the only family she would ever have again. But she promised him sons. And he asked for daughters.

This is the moment where promises might meet their end.

She must send him off to battle like a proper queen. She would like to cry into his shoulder, to act every bit like the little girl she feels herself to be in this moment, when she is faced with losing him forever, but there is no time for such childish antics.

She can feel the eyes of half a hundred upon them, for any movement of men about the king draws attention on this day of reckoning. They are all waiting for some sign, and it is not Sansa's job to give it. That role belongs to Jon.

They sit alone at table, side by side, close enough that if she speaks softly, no one else will hear. She does not turn her head to address him. She looks straight forward, her eyes taking in their people, gathered here for what many of them might fear to be their last meal. "So it's begun."

"Yes."

His thumb draws over her knuckles. He gives no outward hint of disquiet, though Ghost stirs at his side, rising up to nudge Jon's arm with the top of his head.

This is the moment where prophecy will be judged as fantasy or fact and the songs and myths of the future will take shape for future poets.

Jon stands, his hand still holding fast to hers, pulling it from her lap to be at his side, where she can't remain for long. "I have received word of the arrival of the enemy forces. Men, you know where you are needed."

His voice is clear. It carries through the room, reaching every ear. He sounds sure and determined. He sounds like a king. The king Sansa understands him to be. He is the only man in this world born for this moment.

She comes to her feet, her back held straight, her shoulders squared. With one last squeeze of his hand, she withdraws herself from his grip to place her hands on his shoulders, so that she might look directly into his grey eyes, eyes that have looked back at her since the day she was born. She didn't always know him well even when he was her brother, but she truly knows him now and she is certain of how he will fight—out in front of his men, leading as opposed to following in safety. It would be foolish if he wasn't a man of prophecy.

"You will be brave and I will be proud." So very, very proud.

She leans in to press a kiss to his cheek. There can be no more—not now with everyone looking on—but she made sure that he knew last night how very much she loves him. That brief brush of her lips close to his silvery scar and whatever comfort her words might give him will have to do.

Men are already rushing by them, hurrying towards the doors, hurrying into danger. Jon must go as well.

His last words are just for her. "Don't forget."

She shakes her head, though she isn't certain she will concede to his wishes if the time comes.

She watches his back as he leaves the hall.

_If I fall, if the defense of the city fails, you must promise me to run. Conceal who you are as best you can and run, Sansa_.

Perchance she will. It depends on whether she believes there is any reason left for her to run.

…

Lion Gate, she thinks, trying to picture the layout of the gates of the city, as she leaves the women of the castle behind her, some of them clinging to each other, as they fill the Queen's Ballroom. A castle within a castle should make Maegor's Holdfast and the ballroom inside of it the safest place for the assemblage of women, but with dragons awing, there are no truly safe places for them. They don't even bother locking the doors, for if dragon fire sets them ablaze, they can't afford to be trapped like hens in an oven.

A few of the women begged her to stay for her own safety, though she assured them that she would be perfectly safe in the king's bedchamber, where she might have a better view of the battle. She told them they would be safe as well—a lie meant to prevent panic—and that she would bring them news of the battle. Lies still have their usefulness. Their retreat to the ballroom is pointless, something she knows better than to point out, and Sansa needs to have a view of the city and a view of Jon. If she can manage to see him, she might better control the outcome of this day's battle, she might will him to victory. It is a foolish whim, but watching him is the only thing she can do.

Asha can do more. Asha is not confined inside four walls. She will fight alongside the men, contributing to their efforts in a way that is not open to Sansa. She is no warrior, no matter how many grown men she has killed. Her strengths are of a different sort.

She closes the king's heavy bedchamber door behind her, resting against it with her palms pressed flat against the wood long enough to draw a deep breath and then pushing off for the far window. Enough time has passed since Jon and the other men left for their defensive positions, enough time that she knows what greets her outside this window could be the first heralds of death.

She would feel stronger facing this with Ghost at her side. Jon even suggested such an arrangement, trying out the argument he had used on the day he battled Aegon that Ghost would be a piece of him with her, should he not return, but she insisted that the direwolf stay with Jon. Jon faces real danger squarely, so she must look upon it bravely, alone.

But when she squints into the grey of the day in search of amassing armies, although she sees movement, she can make nothing of a battle out. Lion Gate is too far away. If the enemy attacks at Lion Gate, there will be nothing for her to see even from her lofty perch atop Aegon's High Hill. It appears that she would be better off with the women after all, bringing them false comfort with her gentle words and careful lies, because she won't see Jon from here, even if he himself is atop the ramparts, ready to meet their dreaded foe.

If she could only catch sight of him, her eyes fix upon the token upon his arm—snow white against the black of his armor—she might feel comforted. She tied it to his arm in his tent the day he fought Aegon. It is splattered with Aegon's blood, bearing evidence of that day's victory and its loss, just as it bears evidence of his Stark parentage, embroidered in miniature by her with care. And he wears it today. He promised her that he would. He was safe, bloodied but alive, after facing down one dragon, and there is some chance the token could see him safely through this second encounter.

But the walls are too far and the men look like black creeping ants. There is no glimpse of white on black.

There is nothing she can see. Nothing.

Her body goes stiff. She feels them before she sees them, because Jon has seen them and his tension becomes hers. His men must have spotted them as well and shouted quick warnings that will spread like wildfire. The delicate hairs on the back of her neck—bared by the braid she hastily plaited this morning, thinking it would be easier to lop off a braid with the knife in her skirts than hack through loose hanks of hair, should she need to become someone else today—stand at attention just as Ghost's do, when he senses something amiss. For all she knows, he is close by Jon's side, his thick white ruff prickling at the sight before them.

They start off spots on the horizon, small enough that all three look black. They aren't small for long. They are monstrous, hideous beasts. They are terrors. Daenerys' dragons. The things she calls her children.

The largest one is black and red, a terrifying embodiment of the Targaryen sigil and house colors come to life. The other two are not as large, but they are still the biggest creatures she has ever seen, too big to stay aloft, but they do by some foul magic, wheeling overhead, circling ever tighter some point along the walls.

Jon.

They are here for Jon. These vicious abominations are here to kill Jon and Jon alone.

She can't see him, but she can feel the heat of their fire. Even at thirty feet above the ramparts, their fire blasts down with deadly intent and she can feel it—heating her bones, stinging her eyes, making her nerves jump and pop. This is Daenerys' test. Sansa envisioned blood, but perhaps there will be nothing but ash.

Her fingers curl so sharply into the stone windowsill that it feels as if the stone itself should give way to her panicked grasp. She whispers his name repeatedly in a desperate litany. Here she stands useless, caged in by her womanhood, forced to watch Jon's execution from a distance. Another execution. Another death. Her husband. Her kin. Her husband. She should pray to their gods to save him, but all that will come to her tongue is his name, until she's screaming it and her fingernails, breaking, blood blooming at the quick, claw in vain at the stone.

Sansa reaches out a bloodied, trembling hand for support from a man who only had one left, but he does not stand alongside her as he did the last time Jon faced such peril. His place is empty. She is so close to being completely alone. More alone than ever before.

A voice free of teasing, free of sarcasm, free of flirtation, echoes words once spoken, _Look away, my lady. Turn away your gaze._

Her answer is the same as before: "I can't." And she knows what she must do.

Sansa gathers up her skirts, dashes towards the closed door, throws it open, and runs. She runs fast enough that her shoulder crashes into a corridor, jarring her and nearly knocking her to the ground, when she takes a corner too fast. Fast enough that she can taste the tang of blood in her throat from overexertion. Fast enough that a guard left behind to aid in the ladies potential escape has no chance of grabbing hold of her as she flies past him.

She runs. Not away, as Jon urged her. Towards. She runs towards Jon.


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter Rating**: T  
><strong>Chapter Word Count<strong>: 4702  
><strong>Chapter Summary<strong>: He would ask Sansa what she intended on accomplishing in coming here, how she hoped to save him from dragons, but he knows the answer.  
><strong>Author's Note<strong>: Did some weird research for this one. Like...given that King's Landing has approx. 500,000 residents and they're piled on top of each other in slums, roughly how many city blocks would that be? And how long does it take to walk or run the length of a city block? And how long does steel take to cool? So, there you have it.

If you're looking for teasers to tide you over between updates (and yes, this one was a little late in coming, my apologies!) follow me at tumblr (username justadra). I also do a Game of Thrones/ASOIAF weekly meta on tumblr from the point of view of a medieval historian that might interest some of you.

Thank you as always for all the reviews, favorites, and kudos. You all are the best.

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><p>Chapter Twenty-One<p>

Jon shouts for the men who have fallen at his side to be attended to, carried off the walls beside the Lion Gate, where he stood, ready to meet the advancing army. The enemy troops still stand within sight, but they are just out of range. Only the dragons have been brought into battle and they have turned back, wheeling in the sky and disappearing beyond the lines of battle. He knows they were meant for him alone, their flames the test Daenerys wanted on the day they met in her elaborate tent. He has survived them, as he promised her he would, but he can tell from the moans around him that others will not be so lucky. Some of the men make no sound at all, some have already passed into the beyond.

It would have been better for him to face this test alone, where no others might have been harmed, but he supposes Daenerys wanted a public scene, something that would turn the tide towards her quickly, resolutely. With Jon dead, his parentage disproved in a wall of fire, men would flock to her, proclaim her queen and deliver the kingdoms into her hands. Instead, he has survived to fight her and her dragons.

Dragons. He has finally seen them, faced them. They were perhaps worse than even what his fevered dreams could conjure. The one was so large it seemed as if night was upon him when its body flew over him, its wings making a draft that only seemed to fans its flames. She might have been on the creature's back, but inside his helmet with his shield held out before him and his sword held aloft, he could see very little other than hot flames and oily black scales. The attack felt endless, but as he grips the wall to steady himself, he wonders if it was not much longer than half an hour. In that time, however, he was submitted to their fire again and again until he felt as if he must roast.

There is a strange twitching uncertainty of those around him with the dragons suddenly gone and the rest of the Dragon Queen's army unmoving outside the walls of the city, and he pants, trying to catch his breath—for it can't have been more than a five minutes since he felt the last blast of heat that stole his breath—before he shouts again, louder, so that the men might awaken from their stupor and come to the aid of their fallen brothers. It does some good: a few begin to scramble to remove the dying men and replace them.

Jon is pleased by the willingness of his men to continue to step forward, for he knows the dragons could be upon them again in an instant. They are brave, braver than he, for he can survive the flames and they cannot. But despite their movements, despite their bravery, Jon feels their unease, as if they are all collectively holding their breath, waiting for the army in the distance to begin marching forward, waiting for the dragons to appear overhead once more.

It could have been worse. It might still be worse. But either his gods or the gods of the Seven, worshipped high on the Visenya's Hill at his back, have preserved them so far.

He turns his head, looking out over the walls to mark that the army truly is not advancing, but his attention is pulled back, when he hears a cry, his name, higher and more familiar to him than any other voice here at the wall with him.

His eyes find her, fix upon her red hair, the braid of it long against her back, as she pushes through a throng of soldiers that stumble back to avoid touching their queen.

"Sansa," he murmurs, tossing his helmet aside with a clatter to hurry down the stone steps to the street below, where she stands.

She's already at the bottom step, her hands outstretched to him, when he barks to the man closest to her, "Grab her."

The man only hesitates for a moment, but it is long enough that he has to lunge to catch her, and Jon has to dart back a step to avoid her reaching fingertips. Her eyes go wide at Jon's command and the man's tight grip on her elbows, and Jon can feel the spike of her fear in the pit of his stomach mixing with the relief he can't help but feel at seeing his wife, when he thought he might never see her again.

"The armor is still hot. It would burn your hands." She intended on flying into his arms and he knew that telling her to stop would do no good. Her pale flesh would have been singed red. Someone had to stop her. He promised her no one would ever lay a hand on her, but it is better to be frightened than burned.

Her eyes close, hopefully understanding and reassured by his words, and then she gives a hard jerk with both arms to free herself. "Unhand me," she says through gritted teeth, when the man manages to keep hold of one of them, her sleeve bunched in the man's big hand.

Jon nods, and the man steps back, looking down at his feet.

Sansa breathes hard, her hand pressed to her middle as she gulps the air, her cheeks are flushed, and he can see that she has run to be here with him, passing brothels and bakeries along the Street of Seeds and passing through dangerous allies to make her way to the Lion Gate. Her evident distress twists something in his chest. Everything in Jon aches to reach out to her, but his heated armor prevents him from doing so. The blasted armor is making him feel like a cooked goose, as sweat rolls down his face, chest, and arms.

"Fetch me a bucket of water," he tells the man, who looks content to escape the queen he has possibly offended with his touch.

Sansa watches the man run off and then looks back to him, her eyes darting over his body. "You are unharmed."

"Yes."

Satisfied that he is whole, her attention is drawn away from him and settles upon something behind him. She raises a shaking finger towards the gate. "That should be torn down. That should not overlook the defense of your city."

He frowns, following her gaze, and sees a statue of a man. It looks freshly erected, newer than the other monuments he has spied in this city, but the man is unknown to him. "I don't…"

"It's Twin Lannister," she says, over enunciating each word.

So a lion guards this gate, but then, the road outside leads to Lannisport, so it is no wonder the gate bears the charge of their sigil and stands guarded by one of their faces.

He knows very little about the patriarch of the Lannister family. Given the extent of the indignities Sansa suffered at that family's hands, he does not doubt that Twin was partly responsible and that is reason enough to have the statue removed, however, now is not the time. Sansa should know that.

He has seen Sansa hysterical before, but this is something else entirely. Her blue eyes are fiercely lit with a fury that he's uncertain he can contain. Even if his armor was not hot to the touch and he could pull her into his chest, he wonders whether she would allow it.

Perhaps this is what she was like when the Kingslayer found her in the Vale. Perhaps he would know how to soothe her.

Battle does strange things to a man, things Jon does not always like, and his thoughts fleetingly turn dark, something slippery bubbling up inside of him at the thought of one of these loathsome Lannisters touching, calming Sansa, of Jaime Lannister whispering in her ear.

Until he sees blood. Spots of blood on her skirts. Her fingers are tipped in blood too. The hand holding fast to her skirts and the fingers on her trembling hand still held aloft are both bloodied. He is unscathed and she is…

"You're hurt," he says, as he comes down the last few stairs to her, his hand closing around her narrow shoulder.

"I'm fine," Sansa insists with a shake of her head, her chin tilting upward, though she withdraws her hand and he thinks he can see a fine crack of insecurity in her wrath-like confidence.

She tucks an escaped strand of hair behind her ear, leaving a bright trail of blood along her cheek.

He doesn't like it, the sight of blood on her pale face. "You're hurt and you shouldn't be here."

Sansa's nostrils flare. "That woman meant to kill you with her dragons."

He would ask Sansa what she intended on accomplishing in coming here, how she hoped to save him from dragons, but he knows the answer. Her resolve to die with him should he meet his end atop these walls is as heavy in his gut as the few bites of porridge he took while breaking fast this morning. That is not a fate he wants for her, but then, he doesn't want her to live if it means being at a conquering army's mercy either. His only hope has been that she might escape, flee to the East, and live on as someone else, forgetting both Sansa Stark and Jon Snow.

He draws his hand through his hair, wet with sweat and only preserved from the flames by his helmet. "Yes, I'm aware of it, and no doubt she will try again to kill more than just me. The men need to focus on the defense and you could be harmed if an attack is mounted. You shouldn't be here," he repeats.

Sansa glances around her, inhaling deeply before she responds, "I have no wish to distract anyone from their duty. Only, I refuse to stay locked inside a tower while dragons attack you, Your Grace."

"I don't burn."

"No, but you bleed, and those beasts have teeth as long as my forearm," she insists, holding out her arm, her hand balled into a tight fist.

She exaggerates only slightly, but she is right about there being more ways to die than in a dragon's flames. If Daenerys wanted him dead, she could have ended it with a snap of one of her creature's jaws. Even now she has the advantage with her army of Unsullied at their gates, and she does not seize it. She is taunting them, teasing them, or waiting for something. If only he had a moment to sit and think what her inaction might mean.

If only he could escape this bloody armor, he only just thinks, his hand pulling uselessly at the plate about his neck, when he sees his squire stumbling forward with a bucket full to the brim held in his arms, its contents sloshing. Sansa stands aside, as he takes it from the lad, and without pause upends it over his head. He gasps at the feel of water dousing the heat, steam rising off his plate. Water courses from his hair, into his eyes, over his lips, and Jon hands the bucket back blindly.

"Keep water at hand," he instructs, as he wipes his face with his hand, clearing his eyes of water and blinking over at his wife, who looks somewhat better composed, her bloody hands coolly clasped before her and her lips less white, her cheeks less rosy.

Perhaps she can be reasoned with. "Sansa," he begins more gently, so she might listen to his concern for her safety.

"I _know_, Your Grace," she says, slipping her hand into his wet one. "I will take cover somewhere close by. Somewhere out of the way, but I will not stay so far, upon Aegon's High Hill."

"The men," he tries again, but she smiles calmly at him and speaks over his words, her voice rising.

"The men will take heart in their queen's faith in their forthcoming victory." Sansa turns towards the men, who stand dumb, either too confused by her presence, the lack of an attack from Daenerys' army, or the late sight of dragons overhead to react, and calls out to them, "Are your spirits not lifted by your queen rallying to your side, good men?" There is only the noise of swords clattering and armor creaking as men shift hesitantly on their feet. "Our king has no need for fell beasts, no need to hide on the back of an abomination or behind the lines of battle." Someone shouts out their agreement and Sansa's smile broadens. "He bravely leads with a sword, and while I am but a woman, following his lead I will not skulk behind stone walls." Another shout, another voice of approval pierces the low hum. "Proud defenders of King's Landing, is it not right that your queen be within sight of your glories on this day?"

The shouting begins in earnest, three men, then ten, then thirty or more, the sound of their clamor rising to a roar, as men raise their fists and clank their swords against their shields.

She has given them hope.

"You've gotten your way," he says with a grimace that fades as soon as he moves to press a kiss to her cheek.

She is not hysterical. She might be angry, she might be furious, but she is determined above all else, and Sansa is far better at this than he. If he instructed the men to drag her back to Maegor's Holdfast now, the lot of them would turn on him. But then, they seemed lost in a fog until she raised her voice. Her presence might truly do them some good. Her words already have. Daenerys' troops must be able to hear this crazed rally, they must know that a taste of dragons will not send the defenders fleeing from their posts.

"It seems I have," she agrees, stroking his damp cheeks. "You can thank me for it later."

…

Jon sits, poring over the reports from spies that have come back from skirting Daenerys' troops. His perch is inside the kitchen of an abandoned baker's shop that serves now as his command post. Sansa sleeps above in the family's quarters, finally having agreed to let Maester Mullin give her something so that her eyes might close and she might rest for a few hours. He didn't want her this close to the dangers of battle, but now that she is here, he wonders how he would have kept his calm without her. She has been a godsend, visiting the injured, bringing ale to shaken soldiers, and always an encouraging word for those whose confidence might otherwise flag while they wait for who knows what terrors.

Everyone is on edge, for all they can see from the wall and all his spies have reported is that the Dragon Queen's army sits and delays for they know not what purpose just beyond catapult firing range, and though the dragons are beyond their sight, they wait too to return and rain fire upon them once more.

Ghost must feel his anxiety, for as Jon flips over a hurried note, he rises off the ground and turns to face the door that leads to a fenced pen for animals behind the bakery. The animals have been slaughtered long ago and only guards mark the front and back entrances to the shop now. Nevertheless, Ghost's hackles stand stiff, and Jon reaches out a weary hand to assure the direwolf that all is well.

"Jon Snow."

Jon twists in his chair, turning towards the unfamiliar voice.

A small hooded figure stands inside the doorway. Someone not meant to be here. Ghost lunges and Jon only manages to catch him by his haunches and tug him back, speaking his name with authority.

"Hold that beast firm," the figure says, moving around the wooden table where the baker must have rolled out pastries and kneaded dough. "I rather like all my fingers and toes." She pulls the hood back and a tumble of silver white hair spills forth.

It can't be. Jon would rub at his eyes to assure himself that he is not in a waking dream, but he feels fixed in place, frozen like Tywin Lannister's unwanted statue.

"That mangy animal of yours doesn't much like me. Do you think he smells the dragon on me?"

Jon finds his voice, though it comes out gravely, "How did you get inside?" The walls, the gates, everything is guarded. This building is guarded. No one gets in or out without his permission.

"Your men have seen my dragons. More than one man will be willing to help me now. Loyalties are fluid."

"You might remember that, should you win this war and sit before a host of people, whose families you have killed in the process of winning that throne."

She takes a step forward with a sigh, her fingertips brushing the table. "Are you going to raise the alarm? Or run me through with your sword yourself?" she asks, nodding towards the sword that lies before him, between him and her.

"Are you alone?"

"Very much so."

He has very little to fear physically from a woman as small as Daenerys, but his kingdom, his family, his people are all threatened by her presence her in Westeros. He could end it now. But then, perhaps she has come here to end it a different way.

"What do you want?"

She spreads her hands. "To talk."

"We've already talked."

"Yes, but with an audience. One that was rather too eager to interrupt. Those two have a fondness for each other that was distracting," she says, and he can see by her smile that she is trying to unnerve him, but if she is here to talk, he can talk.

"Why have your armies not advanced? Why have you not brought your dragons to bear upon us again?" A day has waned and besides the early attack meant for him, there has been nothing.

She tilts her head, her fingers brushing the hilt of his sword. "It glowed."

He frowns. "What?"

"This sword of yours. It glowed. Like a beacon." When he doesn't respond, she looks annoyed, her brows drawing together as she pushes the sword towards him. "Your sword shone, when Drogon lit you aflame. Perhaps your men didn't take note of it."

"Perhaps not. They might be forgiven. Some of them were burning."

She sits atop the table, drawing one knee up so that her leg dangles off the table's edge. "It's war. Men die. Surely you've hardened your heart to that by now."

Not entirely. He's not sure he'll ever be able to harden his heart to it completely. Before Sansa perhaps he was treading down that road, but Sansa's ability to love in spite of the greatest cruelty is deep and real, it is a balm to him. It fills up the creeping nothingness of being something other than human that might otherwise steal over him. It makes him feel everything more acutely. He felt the pain of Aegon's death even though it was necessary, he feels the death of his men, and should Daenerys die, he would no doubt feel that too. For she is kin. She is his aunt, and if she died, the guilt would lie with him no matter who dealt the blow.

"I passed your test. Is that why you don't bring your armies to bear?"

"Yes, you passed." She purses her lips. "That makes you the only family I have, Jon Snow. I thought I might give you time to reconsider."

She was not ready for reason before, but if he can speak rationally with her now…

She looks at him with the same evaluative stare she directed at him inside her tent. "I had a brother: Viserys. He wouldn't have liked you."

Jon crosses his arms over his chest. "I had brothers as well. They wouldn't have thought much of you either."

She laughs. "Are you always so solemn? I meant to pay you a compliment. My brother was no dragon. You, at least, are blood of the dragon. You've proven that."

Having seen the beasts for himself, Jon is more certain than ever that he would rather be a Stark. A man grown, a king, and he still wishes for the one thing he can't have.

Her dark cape slides open, as she leans towards him, across the table, disturbing the impossibly flimsy pale green gown, so transparent he can see the outline of her thigh through it. "Now you might prove to be wise."

Jon raises his brows at that. "You came here to tell me something, I suppose."

"My army is not as well as it once was. It is not the same army that landed in Westeros several moons ago."

"There were bound to be some loss of life, some injuries. This is _war_," he says, throwing her wise lessons back in her face with bite.

She crooks one pale brow. "Greyscale. We brought it with us from Meereen, and it has spread amongst the ranks." Shireen, Stannis' little girl was afflicted. The wildlings would have nothing to do with her because of it. But, despite her disfigurement, she spread no disease. "It's rather deadly, when it infects grown men. But hold back your triumph: even without an army I can still wipe your defenses out with dragons. You've only seen a hint of what they can do."

Jon does not feel triumphant at her words; he feels a creeping horror spread over him. This is a new enemy he had not expected. "The smallfolk will suffer for it if you bring a plague into this city."

Her fingers bunch the fabric draped over her thigh, her knuckles white with tension, but he can see uncertainty in her violet eyes, when she seethes, "I will take what is mine." Her fingers flex, and as quickly as she has lost her temper, she regains it, speaking more calmly, "If you put an end to this, open the gates to me, and put aside your ambitions, I will quarantine my men outside the city; I will stop the plague's spread. It is the wise choice."

"And otherwise?"

"Otherwise I will do what I must."

"Save my people only to hand them over to someone capable of such cruelty." He looks at his sword and thinks again how quickly he could end this. But what kind of man would that make him? "I can't allow it."

"You really think I'm cruel? My throne was stolen from me, stolen from my father, from my brothers by traitors and murders."

"Stolen from my father as well then, and yet, I have no wish to wager the lives of my people to claim it."

Daenerys huffs. "You can't possibly understand. My brother fed me on the stories of the injustice against our family. You are a bastard only lately revealed, and I am willing to be generous with you, but these kingdoms are mine by right. I have only come to take back what is mine."

"Even if you kill half of King's Landing?"

"I have no wish for people to be sick and suffer. That is why I've come to speak to you. I'm not a gentle heart, but I'm not a monster, Snow."

He watches her, holds her gaze. She is lovely, but just from looking at her one can see that she is not gentle. There is proof enough of her lack of a gentle spirit: the smallfolk burnt, fields scorched, his men's flesh crackling, while the real enemy comes forth from the North.

Daenerys sniffs. "Sansa. Now there's a gentle heart from what my Hand has told me. Have you left her in the Red Keep?"

Jon thinks of Sansa lulled to sleep by a draught, sleeping unaware above them. He does not like the change in subject. He does not like that Daenerys thinks of Sansa at all. Perhaps he was wrong not to call for his men. A potential threat to Sansa is as upsetting to him as a threat to the people of Westeros.

"Don't go pale," Daenerys chides. "I like her. She was rather too free in her manner with me, but I liked her in spite of it. Because of it. But she is your _sister_. They say that is the cause of our madness."

"Sansa is not my sister. She is my wife."

Daenerys bites her lip, the corners of her mouth quirking. "You love her. Well, yes, she's lovely. Of course you do, but it might have been better for you to marry someone else."

"You?" he asks flatly.

"Tyrion suggested as much, but I think I am done with husbands." Daenerys looks off over his shoulder, her face falling. "I have not had the luxury of following my heart. My heart has been forged in fire, not ice. But flames are just as effective at hardening your heart for the task of ruling. If you live, you'll see how ruling makes the heart hard, how love becomes impossible."

She seems lost in some reverie, and Jon feels the opportunity slipping away to convince her that this war must end. He reaches out a hand, his scarred one, to cover hers.

"Your Grace," he tries. "I need help fighting in the North. There is a great evil beyond the Wall, spilling over the Wall, which will overwhelm us all if we don't turn all our resources towards its destruction."

"Grumkins and snarks?" she asks with a sigh.

"Others and their thralls, wights. Your dragons would be of use: the wights burn. Very little else stops them. Others are even harder to kill unless you have a hoard of dragonglass."

She narrows her eyes in confusion and shakes her head. "What is this nonsense?"

"It's a threat men thought only legend. I've seen them, I've fought them. If the Others are rising again, it could mean this winter will last a generation. The Others will come and kill everyone in their path. Would it not be better for all if you abandoned your plans to attack King's Landing and we combined our resources?"

Daenerys pulls free of his grip and her hand comes to her mouth, her fingers just brushing her lips as they dance mindlessly. "Turn north?" she asks, her eyes not meeting his.

"Yes. If there is to be a throne to save, we must act soon."

"You're serious. You believe you speak the truth."

Jon leans back in his chair, his hand finding Ghost's head. "Yes. I'm convinced of it."

"And then who rules this frozen wasteland you envision after we defeat these _Others_?"

"_If _we defeat the Others." Then she will have proved herself to him, as she insisted he prove himself to her. If Daenerys is willing to fight to save her people in the North, perhaps she is not be the cruel conqueror he imagines her to be. He would be willing to discuss joint rule or handing over the Seven Kingdoms under such circumstances. He would not feel it a betrayal of his people.

"I see," she says standing and fidgeting with her hood. "The hour is late, Jon Snow. Will you let me slip away or am I to be shackled?"

It still is not a solution without charm, and yet… "You came to talk, we have talked. We both have things to consider."

She moves towards the doorway, and Jon extends his arm. "Only, you might remember _my_ generosity, Daenerys, should our positions ever be reversed."

"Are you so worried about your own skin?" she asks, drawing her hood up. "Or do you mean to secure generous treatment for your wife?"

"I think you know what I mean." He would die a thousand deaths to secure Sansa's safety.

Daenerys nods. "I knew you would not harm me, Jon Snow. Your wife is not the only one with a gentle heart."


	22. Chapter 22

**Chapter Rating**: T  
><strong>Chapter Word Count<strong>: 3504  
><strong>Chapter Summary<strong>: Should the queen ever lose her special hold on these vicious creatures, they will all be lost.  
><strong>Author's Note<strong>: Mea culpa for a slightly delayed chapter. Between juggling the introduction of two new POVs and writing midterms, I've been a busy lady. Hopefully you all enjoy these new POVs and the new information they reveal. It's another cliffie, I'm afraid, so as usual if you're looking for teasers, you can follow me at tumblr (username justadram), where I fangirl, answer questions, and run a ASOIAF medieval meta that might interest folks. I've mentioned on tumblr, but I'll say it here as well that we'll be meeting some new canon characters in upcoming chapters, so if there are folks you're curious about, there's a chance they'll appear. _Cryptic_. Thank you all for your continued support. It's my pleasure to write and share this with you.

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><p>Chapter Twenty-Two<p>

Tyrion stands back from the dragons, watching them through narrowed eyes, against the background of a sky that does not yet show the first signs of the dawning of a new day. His fascination with the scaled giants has not dimmed with exposure, for they are a wonder to behold and he can't imagine a day when that would cease to be case, but his wariness has increased as he watched villages burn and heard the wail of those who were not fleet enough of foot to escape their flames. Even at this distance, he is not safe. None of them are.

Except for the queen. These are her children.

"They're more restless than usual," Tyrion says, craning his neck up to look into the branded face of Ser Jorah, who stands feet planted and chin raised, watching the dragons with an interest not so different from his own. They all have sought to come home conquering giants, and these are the beasts that make that triumph possible.

The dragons thrash, blowing thick smoke from their nostrils that arcs through the sky with each toss of their heads. They growl. They snap their jaws.

"They were brought back before they could taste flesh," the burly knight reasons.

Daenerys saw that Jon Snow, clad in dark plate armor, did not burn and reined in her dragons. No one, including the queen and her children, seems to know whether she means to renew the attack on her nephew and King's Landing, but it is clear that if she means to end Snow's life, it will take more than dragon fire to accomplish it.

"Perhaps. But they have been fed since."

Ten goats have been sacrificed to feed the queen's children—three a piece for Rhaegal and Viserion and four for the insatiable Drogon—as they are every day. Daenerys usually attends their meals like a proud mother, watching as they toss back giant chunks of charred meat, but she was absent last night and Tyrion alone observed the dragons' leery handlers feeding of the beasts. The night was cold enough that steam rose off their bodies, and Tyrion stuffed his gloved hands under his armpits, wishing he had some of their natural heat. It feels as if it will be a long winter, but if legend is correct, these dragons and their magic could help drive the cold away.

"Being fed doesn't bring the same satisfaction as stalking prey or a kill fresh from battle," Jorah argues, his words punctuated by a sharp grunt, as they both jerk back a step, when Drogon lets loose a particularly fearsome hiss in their direction.

"Very restless," Tyrion murmurs. Jorah is not wrong: the dragons are better sated when they have fought and killed, but Tyrion thinks it is more than that. Just as a child reacts to its mother's moods, so too do these dragons seem to reflect the shifts in Daenerys' humors, be they dark or light. It speaks to their bond, for Daenerys needs no dragon horn to control her children, relying only on their dedication to her, and when Victarion's Dragonbinder fell into her hands after the great battle that ended that squid's life and teems of others' lives as well, she refused to blow it.

_My children come to my call alone, not the work of sorcery_.

The horn lies at the bottom of the sea, lost forever. Daenerys threw it herself, using two hands to heft it overboard, as they left Meereen and Slaver's Bay behind. Should the queen ever lose her special hold on these vicious creatures, they will all be lost.

"The queen did not sleep last night," Tyrion says, his eyes fixed upon Drogon, who keeps unfurling his black wings, as if he means to take flight, but Tyrion can feel the roil of Jorah's anger without glancing his way. He wrongly assumes that Tyrion means to insinuate something about the queen's nightly habits, about how she spends her nights and with whom. Tyrion smiles to himself, because he doesn't like the queen's _Ser Bear_ to grow too comfortable with his place at her side. Daenerys knows her consort must be more carefully chosen with an eye to political alliances, but it is even more important that Jorah understand it. "The lamps were lit from what I saw and it's no wonder: she has a great deal to consider."

Ser Jorah makes a deep sound that rumbles in the barrel of his hairy chest. "There's been too much considering. Here we sit, when the army could be attacking and taking what is hers."

"The army is sick." Greyscale has already taken some of the men and it will take more before this plague has worked its way through the ranks. Tyrion has so far avoided it and the queen in her Targaryen glory seems immune to the disease, but Penny is dead—one of the first to die and the one Tyrion was sorriest to see go—and if Jorah had any consideration for his safety, he might worry about his own mortality. But since he was reunited with and forgiven by his silver haired queen, nothing else has seemed to matter.

"Bugger the army. The dragons are healthy."

And growing every day, so that the dragons are all they would truly need to take the city. Tyrion observes their growth with both interest and dread. The Dragonpit on Rhaenys' hill might keep them, but he wonders whether the queen would submit to her children's enclosure or whether she might consider it cruel. It might be crueler to her people to let them roam free.

"Would that be your counsel then? To attack her nephew?"

Ser Jorah crosses his thick arms over his chest and rocks back on his heels. "You have a great fondness for nephews, Lannister?"

Sometimes when Jorah says his family name, it still sounds like _imp_, although it wouldn't do to call the queen's Hand by such a name. Jorah hasn't forgotten Tyrion is a dwarf and neither has anyone else. No one ever will. He doesn't let Jorah see that he's heard the cut, however, for he knows well enough that he'd never be free of their mockery if he did—Hand or no. He gives him a rueful smile, instead.

"I had a nephew I was not unfond of." But harmless little Tommen is dead. Just like Tommen's mother and father and nearly every other Lannister both good and bad and somewhere in between, and as that reality has sunk in, the share of Tyrion that so thirsted for revenge, for a victory that would prove his worth seems much smaller and Westeros seems less and less recognizable. He wonders if it is not the same for Daenerys after watching from Drogon's back Jon stand below her in a shower of flames.

"I don't think it's _fondness_ exactly that troubles our queen," Tyrion says. "It's the proof of the relation itself, when she didn't believe one existed. It's rather inconvenient to discover one's enemy is one's kin. Some people have scruples about such things."

"You don't."

Tyrion snorts, rubbing at the place where his nose should be. "No, I dont' give a shit about that, but that jab of yours has grown tired. Let's be done with it now. Or do your kin have nothing to complain of in regards to your behavior, ser?"

Jorah's scarred cheek twitches, but he does not rise to the bait, breathing deeply through his nose before saying, "Whether Snow burned or not that bastard is a bloody Stark, and you know it. Any relation shouldn't trouble the queen."

Tyrion chuckles. "You know, I think Jon Snow would be rather pleased to hear you call him a Stark. He'd thank you for it, as that's the only thing that boy ever wanted to be."

"Even if it took fucking his sister to make it so?"

There is a twinge in Tyrion's belly at Jorah's words spoken against the Lady Sansa. Feelings of chivalry can present themselves at the most tiresome of moments. There is a great deal more to worry about than Sansa's honor. She could be dead in a day if Daenerys decides to attack. But he finds himself muttering, "Lady Sansa is not Jon Snow's sister."

"He's the spitting image of Ned Stark. I feel sorry for his wife married to such a somber faced prig."

She certainly is lovely. Too lovely for the solemn faced Jon Snow. Too lovely for anyone, perhaps. If he wanted to drape a Lannister red cloak on her shoulders now, it would require more than her bending her knees to accomplish it. Jon Snow had no such trouble. But every man carries his own burden, Tyrion has come to understand, whether a tall man or dwarf. Jon's might be Jaime Lannister. There was something in Sansa's tone and something in Jon's face, when she defended his brother that gave Tyrion pause. He has no wish to haunt the lovely Lady Sansa, but it is possible that another Lannister man already does.

Tyrion raises one brow, as he turns away from the dragons and towards Daenerys' brightly lit tent. "I'd save your pity. Lady Sansa has been married to more unpleasantly faced men. She no doubt considers him something of an improvement."

Ser Jorah snorts, his mouth quirking.

"I should speak with the queen before dawn breaks. She might look kindly to some advice after a sleepless night," Tyrion says to the man Daenerys calls her bear before gesturing to one of the dragon handlers, who looks appropriately terrified by the dragons' agitation, urging him to come close enough to deliver an order. "Keep a close eye on these beasts." What good that might do, he doesn't know, but perhaps if he makes headway with the queen and calms her temper, they won't have to worry about the dragons' stirrings.

…

The draught Maester Mullin gave her made Sansa sleep like the dead, so she knows not when Jon came to bed, but at some point her eyes opened to the unfamiliar, darkened room and she could feel him beside her, his weight dipping the mattress tick behind her.

But he was not properly in bed with her the way she would have liked. Instead of being undressed and beneath the linens, he sat propped against the simple wooden headboard, his head tilted to the side, with his black boots still on his feet. His face creased with worry even in sleep, his jaw clenched tight, Jon looked as if he had come to check on her and fallen asleep himself without ever having meant to. It didn't look a particularly restful sleep, but she didn't dare disturb him, for she suspected that if she woke him to urge him to lie down, he would leave her again to hunch over his pile of parchment, and he needed whatever rest he could steal.

Ghost was with them too, for now that she was awake, she heard his soft snores coming from beside the bed before the bedchamber's door. It would be nice to have Jon's wolf closer, but there was not room for the three of them in this small bed. Cozy even for the two of them, compared with Jon's bed in the Red Keep. It was a relief to have Jon so close and know he is safe. She curled into her husband's leg, fitting her body to him, and tucked her head into his lap. He smelled of sweat and heat and leather and an earthiness that she knew as Jon. He could stand to bathe, but it wasn't an unpleasant smell. There was something comforting about it, and although she had thought she wouldn't be able to fall back sleep, her eyes grew heavy again and her breathing slowed to match the rise and fall of Jon's chest until dreamless sleep took her once more.

When Sansa's eyes open for the second time, it is not to the soft rasp of Jon's breathing or Ghost's snore but the sound of bells. The bakery shop in which they are housed is not far from Visenya's hill, where the Sept of Baelor sits and the sound of its bells peeling is loud at this close distance. Too loud for this early, Sansa thinks, as she presses one hand over her ear. It sounds as if all of them are being wrung at once, but that can't be right. It is only on momentous occasions—the death of a king—that the bells in their seven crystal towers are all wrung. And here sits Jon, King's Landing's king, alive and slowly stirring beneath her head, his hand tangled in her hair, where it palms the base of her skull.

She pushes herself up in the bed, Jon's hand dropping from her as she blinks away the confusion of sleep to look towards the bakery bedchamber's sole window. By the grey color of the sky, she can see that it is as early as her body tells her, but there is some other strange source of light beyond the window that has nothing to do with the rising sun.

"Jon," she whispers, as she blindly searches for his hand, her gaze transfixed on the window. "Jon, I think the city is burning."

There is the sound of heavy boots on the stairs, rushing up towards them. It is the unmistakable tread of men, probably the guards posted to protect them, who now bring word of a fresh attack from Daenerys' beasts. One that could kill them all, should the fires reach the alchemists' stores of wildfire, some of which Jon's men have not been able to locate in the brief time they have held the city. Fire will consume the city. It will eat their bones.

The door is already bursting open, Ghost scrambling back to avoid its swing, when Jon mouths the word that has tightened her chest to the point where she can scarcely draw breath—_dragons_.

…

Dany swipes at her brow, as Tyrion Lannister waddles from her tent. His visit has only inflamed her more, though she knows he speaks for the voice inside of her that has increased in volume ever since she looked down upon Jon Snow, as he held aloft a sword that glowed hot in his hand and the flames of her dragons did not end his troubling existence. It is surprising to hear her Hand say it though, since he was as eager as her to come here and wage war for the throne of Westeros.

Tyrion has only been gone a minute, when she hears Ser Barristan arguing outside her tent. She pauses in her pacing to call out to him, "Who is it, ser?"

"Ser Jorah," he answers back with enough irritation to make clear how little he likes it that her bear has come to disturb the queen.

But perhaps Ser Jorah is just the man she needs to see.

"Let him in."

She has her back turned, when Ser Jorah ducks inside her tent, but she can feel his eyes on her. They are always on her, boldly fixed, since she forgave him, cupped his face, and brushed her thumb over the brand that will mark him forever as a man who was once a slave.

He will become a different sort of slave if she is queen of this land, and she wonders if he has considered what it would be like to stand behind her, while another man sits at her side. She has told Jon Snow that she will not take a husband, but they will urge her to do so, Tyrion already has urged her to do so. It is the politically expedient thing to do in a new land, where she lacks allies.

"Your Grace."

She twists her fingers before her, her gesture hidden from his sight. "It is early to be in your queen's tent."

He does not apologize. "Or late. Your little Lannister claims you didn't sleep."

Dany turns, her pale blue skirts swishing with the quickness of her movement. "I didn't. There were things to be done, so I made a little trip behind the enemy lines." Ser Jorah's brow knits and the confusion she sees there makes her smile. Not even Tyrion knows what she managed last night. She has slipped by them all like a shadow and she needed no magic to do it. "I went to visit my brother's bastard inside the walls of the city."

Her bear steps forward, his chest inflating. "You didn't."

"Oh, but I did."

"What are you about, risking yourself like that?"

There is something else in his eyes besides outrage at the risk she has taken, as if he is not quite certain what his queen was about, going to meet Jon Snow under cover of night, as if a seduction has taken place behind his back.

She waves her hand dismissively. "It was important to me that I speak with him once more now that I know who he is."

"You don't know who he is."

Daenerys looks him up and down, slowly, with great measure. He is still too brash, still too proud, but she wouldn't like him as well if he came to heel entirely. "Don't I, ser? I saw his sword glow. Are you not familiar with the prophecy?"

At least Tyrion agrees with her that Jon Snow must be who he claims he is. She has no patience for arguing this point, when a great part of her wishes it was not true. Things would be some easier—_some_—if he was an imposter.

"I don't care for prophecy."

She sighs. "No, you don't understand it. There's a difference."

Jorah's jaw works. "You shouldn't let that sway you. This is what you've wanted for as long as I've known you."

"Yes it is," Dany softly agrees, and that is why it is so confusing, so infuriating to feel so uncertain now. Even now her breath comes fast and her stomach twists.

"We're at the door. You should attack. Attack now. Use your dragons and end this." Jorah's voice grows more clipped with each phrase, and she envies him his certainty, but his certainty does nothing to assuage her doubts. It intensifies them.

_Be quiet! _she wants to scream at him, but she counts five, instead, trying to regain her slipping control over herself. "I sent Tyrion away for lecturing me, and now I see you've come to do the same. I hoped for something else from you."

He hesitates, looks as if he might take another step towards her, and finally asks, "What is it you want from me, Daenerys?"

Dany considers for a long moment, her heart fluttering painfully. "I don't know. Not knowing what I want from you is part of my dilemma."

Jon Snow does not seem a bad man and perhaps he would not be a bad king. He is a Targaryen, although he looks nothing like her and has been raised by a traitorous dog. But if she left the ruling to him, she might have the other things she sometimes thinks she'd rather have. Sometimes, when her woman's heart awakens her from heated dreams.

"Forgive me, Your Grace, but you wanted to come home and we're here."

_Home_. "But where is home really, my bear?" Here in this strange land? In a house with a red door and a lemon tree outside her window? Or would she find her home in something, _someone_ much closer. Something that stands to be snatched away from her, should she rule Westeros as its queen. Would she ever feel at home here with her heart's choice closed to her forever?

He must hear the weakness in her voice, for he begins to move towards her and only stops short when shouts ring out somewhere beyond her tent. His hand goes to his sword, hovering there, and she raises her hand to him, stilling him as she tilts her head.

Jon Snow did not seem poised to attack, when she left him. If anything he seemed as troubled as she, but something has disturbed the camp.

The flap of her tent flies back, and Ser Barristan stands outlined in the grey light before dawn. "Drogon has taken flight."

Her breath catches in her throat. "Taken off for where?"

"King's Landing, Your Grace."

Her hand flies to her mouth, as she chokes back the sudden certainty that King's Landing in flames is not what she wants but that it might be too late to stop her child from setting it ablaze.

Why would Drogon do this?

Ser Barristan and Ser Jorah speak at once, their mouths moving, but she hears no sound. She only sees Drogon's wings against the sky and the defenders of King's Landing below, and she knows what she must do. She must stop him.

"A horse, ser. Fetch me a horse at once."


	23. Chapter 23

**Chapter Rating**: T  
><strong>Chapter Word Count<strong>: 3198  
><strong>Chapter Summary<strong>: There is a rainstorm of arrows unleashed so thick that if they were directed at Daenerys, she would look like a lady's red silk pincushion stuck full of needles.  
><strong>Author's Note<strong>: It's been a loooong break between chapters. Holidays, midterms, and family issues are all to blame and I apologize for the unintended delay. Your favs, follows, kudos, and comments in the meantime have not gone unappreciated! I hope to get back on schedule, because we're in the homestretch! If you've gotten a taste for Jon/Sansa, I'm currently plotting a multi-chapter modern AU, which will prominently feature Jon/Sansa.

* * *

><p>Chapter Twenty-Three<p>

Ser Barristan's grey flanked horse gallops, its hooves beating a punishing rhythm against the frozen ground beneath her, making the world fly past in a blur of snowy white, as she approaches King's Landing with her body tucked tight against the animal's flexing muscles. The city's walls grow taller with each powerful stride towards them and it belatedly occurs to her to look up at the battlements, where archers surely are primed to end her horse's charge and her life before she reaches her goal. She gave no thought to her safety even as she mounted and rode off with her bear shouting her name, but what awaits her finally begins to settle in underneath her skin. She squints up at the city backlit by either flames or the cresting morning sun in the east to see if her fate is already set.

It is what Dany should have expected: there are archers with arrows cocked lining the walls. Indeed, there is a rainstorm of arrows unleashed so thick that if they were directed at her, she would look like a lady's red silk pincushion stuck full of needles. But they are not directed at her. Though she is a lone figure on the field, her blue gown billowing out behind her, and charging towards the city's defenses—not to be missed by anyone with eyes in their head—none of the men atop the walls point their crossbows at her. None of them seem to mark her approach. Their eyes and their arrows are all raised to the early morning sky.

They fire upon Drogon. _Her child_. And yet, as he blasts them with a thick column of fire that will no doubt end some of those men's lives, Dany feels torn in a way she has not before, when her dragons lay waste to villages and helped her in her march across Westeros. The flames knock archers back out of her line of sight, and she can't help but think of the people in King's Landing. She thinks of the wildfire Tyrion Lannister has warned her is held in old clay pots beneath the city, waiting to burn the buildings and the people who hide inside of them alive. Thousands of them dead because of her. That will be the people's doom should a spark from Drogon's fiery breath or just the heat of his flame make the green wildfire catch. It is unpredictable, volatile, ready to explode, Tyrion cautioned her in her vast tent, shifting uneasily on his bowed legs. Wildfire was the plaything of her father—the Mad King—Tyrion told her once and Ser Barristan confirmed it when pressed, and now it and her dragons could bring an end to the lives of the people she would claim to rule.

It isn't what Viserys taught her, but she has come to learn that the people of Westeros did not want her father, because of his madness and cruelty, and this will be how she will start her reign. Either her child will be killed in this unintended, unplanned attack or she will be the queen of charred bones and cooked meat. The queen of ashes. Neither is an outcome she can abide.

Hands wrapped fast around the reins of Barristan's horse, she screams her dragon's name, but her voice is swallowed up by the pounding of hooves and the screech of her child as more than one arrow finds a way to pierce his scales, making black blood pour from his wounds. She feels each of them as if they pierced her own vulnerable skin, but her cries and the arrows are not enough to stop him—not yet. Something more must be done.

She reins in Barristan's horse with a harshness that makes the animal dance sideways and toss its head, sending foam flying from its mouth. She is almost unseated, but it makes no difference if she is thrown now, for she has reached the limits of the city and its walls. She does not wait for her mount to still its frenzied prancing, for there is no time to lose. She slips from its back, smacking its flank to make it turn and run away from her—an act of mercy to ensure that it will not be roasted by flames, should she manage to draw her child's attention.

And she must, for she can't lose another child. She can't watch her great beast of a child die and she can't lose the people of King's Landing.

She raises her arms to the sky and she screams. She calls out to her warring child with all her might. She begs for him to stop.

…

Jon watched Daenerys fly away on Drogon's back with as much awe and confusion as any of his men, and just like the others, he was unsure what it meant for the war, when she became a speck on the horizon. But there were fires to extinguish and broken, burnt, and injured men screaming on the walls: he could spare the consequences of this unexpected moment little thought.

But now that she and her Hand stand before himself and Sansa in the Red Keep's Great Hall, it must be his first question.

"What is your intention, Daenerys?"

Hasty letters of a truce exchanged between them were not enough to assuage the concerns of some on his council. When she requested entry into the city for a meeting with him, they urged him to refuse. They feared what it could mean, should she step foot inside these walls, should the people see her here, but Jon trusted his people and he extended a shaky trust towards her as well. It is what he felt he must do, it was his duty. He accepted her request in hopes that they might forge an alliance to save Westeros from the Others.

Of course, Asha claims that the content of her plea moved his womanish heart, and she is not entirely wrong in thinking so.

_I wish to see the seat of my father and my ancestors' power. I want to see their throne—just once._

It is an urge he understands. Though he feels it for Winterfell more than he does this throne for which the men believe he has fought, when he only fought for them, for all of them.

"I am going home, Jon Snow."

He crosses his arms over his chest. "And where is that?"

She gives an unreadable smile. "Why would I tell you, when you might chase me across continents, the way King Robert did?"

He shakes his head. Daenerys might pose a threat to him in the future, but there is no guarantee that there will be a future, so he must deal with the present. "I spoke to you of the threat in the north. That is my primary concern, one which will keep me more than busy."

"You _are_ going," Sansa clarifies a little stonily. She was on the walls after Daenerys flew away, helping with the men that had been burnt, and she was not moved by the Dragon Queen's request to come here. "Home is elsewhere. You're leaving Westeros."

"Yes. Your climate does not appeal to me," Daenerys claims, though she is as usual not dressed for winter and her skin betrays no sign of the cold. "And there is good I can do elsewhere."

"You renounce your claim then?" Sansa presses.

Tyrion snorts at this, rubbing his chin, as he observes the exchange between queens—one draped in white furs and the other frothy lilac silks. Perhaps this little man knows better than most how unlikely it is for either woman to give way.

Daenerys narrows her eyes at his wife, who stands close to his side, her fingers buried in the wrap of fur around her shoulders. "I have the better claim and unless you can produce my father's body and animate him, so that he might legitimize my brother's bastard, that will never change. But," she adds, her gaze cutting towards the throne, "the Targaryen line would end with me, for my dragons are my only children. And these Westerosi people seem to like you, Jon Snow. Let them have you now rather than later. Enjoy your frozen prize."

She speaks icily, but Jon doesn't believe that it is the cold of this land and the threats she doesn't seem to believe in that turn her away from Westeros' shores.

He calls to her, as Daenerys turns and walks towards the Iron Throne, "It's a long way to have come to merely turn back now." And many lives have been lost for what purpose? Sansa grips his elbow, squeezing, perhaps with the intent to silence him, but he continues. "Why do good elsewhere, when you could do good here, the home of your ancestors. You could assist in the fight in the North."

Her sandaled feet make no noise against the stone, as she stops before the throne. "My army is unwell, Jon Snow. They would not last."

"Your dragons are well."

Sansa huffs. She hates the dragons. He does not much like them either, but he would like to think that their flames might be of use against the Others and the wights that they spawn. If the dragons could kill the way dragonglass and fire do, he is willing to have them and their mistress here in Westeros.

She glances over her shoulder at them, her violet eyes flashing. "My children are not the answer to every problem, as much as I wanted them to be."

His army will seem a small force, when facing off against the terrors that await them. Three dragons and whatever healthy soldiers she could muster might give them a fighting chance. He is not willing to push the matter, however, when she is agreeing to end the war and leave. He needs this war to be over, so that the next might begin. It must begin soon if they are to outlive this winter.

Daenerys bends to look closer at the throne of swords, though she does not extend a hand to touch it or move to sit in it, which Jon knows Sansa would not like. Jon still has not sat it himself, but a coronation is planned for three days hence—something small, for he has no wish for pageantry in this time of grave danger and no love of it in general. He would dispense with the tradition entirely, but it is a necessary one, his council assures him. He will use those days to prepare to march north.

"The men in my army who are too sick to travel must stay here," she says, as she straightens up, still staring at the throne with her narrow back to them, a long silver braid dangling between her half exposed shoulder blades. "Will you promise not to harm them?"

Tyrion takes a step towards Jon, inclining his head as he offers, "They are foreigners and have no personal stake in who sits the throne. Sick or no, they will cause you no trouble. Daenerys will instruct them to put away their swords."

Jon nods at the dwarf. "Very well. We will quarantine what is left of your camp and I'll see to it that supplies and maesters are provided to care for them."

"That is generous, Your Grace."

Jon takes note of Tyrion's use of his title. He is unsure who plans on leaving Westeros with Daenerys. Ser Barristan and Ser Jorah, presumably, as they are members of her guard and await her outside the doors to the Great Hall, but what does Tyrion wish to do now that Daenerys intends on heading for foreign soil? Jon has no love for the Lannisters, and Tyrion must know this. He would not want him at court, no matter how skilled the little man is in politics. He can't look at him without thinking of what Sansa has endured. It was no different with Jaime, although Sansa insisted they get along and Jon can refuse her nothing.

"It's an ugly thing," Daenerys says, drawing their attention back to her, as she tilts her head. "I suppose I should have realized it would be. It wouldn't suit me, this great hulking throne of iron." She gathers up the gossamer skirts of her gown in one delicate hand and walks towards them, pausing only as her path crosses Jon and Sansa's. "I rather think it won't suit you either, Jon Snow. Melt it down and start anew with something simple, something not weighed down by our family's past. Your queen will have some notion of what would be best, I'm sure."

"You might stay for the coronation," Sansa says, and Jon wonders if she means it as a taunt or whether it is a genuine invitation.

Daenerys purses her lips and looks up at Sansa, who towers more than a head taller than his diminuitive aunt. "I don't think any of us would much enjoy that," Daenerys finally responds before walking from the room, leaving them all staring after her.

Even Tyrion watches her go, standing stock still, as if his feet are affixed to the floor. His presence here makes it impossible for Jon to celebrate this victory with his wife for even a moment.

"And what of you, Lannister?" Jon asks, gesturing to the open doors. "Will you follow your queen?"

Tyrion looks up at Sansa and smiles crookedly. Jon's chest tightens, as he realizes the man wishes to change sides. He can't judge these Lannisters fairly, he knows, but Jon finds it hard to believe anyone would think it a good idea to accept a member of Daenerys' camp back after such a short time.

"I always thought you would become a very capable lady."

"Queen," Jon corrects with a frown. "You should answer me, Lannister, for I have a great deal to do today."

"Jon," Sansa soothes, whispering his name as she pats his arm. She gives him a little smile and then looks down at Tyrion. "Do you wish to stay?"

"It depends, Your Grace."

"On what?" Jon grits out, irritated that he would dare to request terms.

"I think I might guess," Sansa says. "He has always wanted to be the lord of Casterly Rock. Is that not right?"

Tyrion grins, and Jon feels anger pooling in his stomach. "You expect treason to be repaid with my acknowledging your claim to your family's seat?"

"We might debate whether I could commit treason against a king who was not yet crowned, Your Grace. But, I think you might understand my desire to hold my father's seat, as a son never meant to inherit yourself."

Jon's jaw works, as he thinks of the day Robb told him he could never inherit Winterfell. He remembers the bite of that knowledge, how it gnawed at him and made him think things he did not wish to think about his brother. But he was never meant to be lord of Winterfell and he holds something much better in its place—Sansa, the Lady of Winterfell, who once was a Lannister herself, who has been their victim. He does not have to love Tyrion Lannister, but he can learn to tolerate him if it is what Sansa wants. "Sansa," he says, slipping a hand into the small of her back. "What is your decision?"

She raises her brows in question and Jon answers her wordlessly: the fate of the remaining Lannister is in her hands.

She blinks her Tully blue eyes and straightens her shoulders. "Can we trust you to be a loyal subject?"

"I swear it, yes. I think you might find a dwarf to be a very excellent subject to a bastard king, and whatever is left of the Lannister fortune will be put to good use, Your Grace, to fight the war that is coming. I am a selfish man, and I would very much like to survive this war. I imagine you our best hope for that."

"I have one caveat," Sansa says, raising her finger. "The king has had your siblings' bodies sent to Casterly Rock. I do not know who received them there. I will sleep better knowing your brother has had a proper burial. He should be interred in the Hall of Heroes with his kin."

Tyrion is silent for a moment, and the two exchange looks that are not meant for Jon, though he reminds his wife that he is here, when he rubs his thumb over the thick wool of her dress.

"Yes, of course," Tyrion finally concedes. "You do him a greater kindness than he did your family."

This is why Sansa will make for a better queen than Cersei Lannister ever was, Jon thinks to say, although he knows Tyrion had no love for his sister, but Sansa speaks first, "You will sleep better for it too, I wager, knowing your big brother is at rest."

Sansa bends to extend her hand to Tyrion.

He takes it, as Jon says with a sigh, "The council won't like it."

"No, they won't, but you can blame me for the decision and they may rage at me as they please. It is repayment for the kindness Lord Lannister did their queen in the past." Jon can't argue with that. "Indeed, they might all thank him, for I suspect he played no small role in dissuading Daenerys from attacking our city and finishing us off with her dragons."

Tyrion steps back, his hands on his belt. "I would disagree, but it is rather rare in my case not to be called small, so I will happily take credit for diverting the king's aunt even if those who know her better will understand that very little can be said to change her mind when it does not want to be changed."

"Very well. It is decided then," Jon says just as his squire darts through the open doors and hurries towards them. Jon watches his squire's approach, noting his reddened cheeks, as he adds, "You best make yourself scarce before the coronation. Head for Casterly Rock at once, for I'm not sure my men will look as kindly upon your presence here as the queen has."

"They rarely do. Thank you, Your Grace," Tyrion says with a bow before turning on his heel to leave.

Never, never, never alone, Jon thinks with a tight smile, as his squire skids to a stop before them and draws great panting breathes.

"Your Grace," his squire gasps.

Sansa's brows draw down in concern, and she reaches out to brush his squire's shoulder with a questing hand. "You've run too fast."

The green lad turns redder at the contact and takes a deep breath. "The Martells have arrived. They're here."

Sansa laughs and bites her lip. "Too late they come to war. How convenient."

Daenerys' dragons burnt Quentyn Martell—they loathe the queen for it, he suspects—but they might have considered it wiser to allow the dragons to fight amongst themselves and eliminate each other before entering the fray. Something has held them back at least, but they are here now and he knows just how to make use of them.

"Not too late. I hope they have brought their warmest clothes. It will be a great deal colder than it is in Dorne where we are going."


	24. Chapter 24

**Chapter Rating**: M for sexual content  
><strong>Chapter Word Count<strong>: 3734  
><strong>Chapter Summary<strong>: The room is already thick with tension before the Martells ever enter, as reports reach the Keep of movements in Daenerys' camp.  
><strong>Author's Note<strong>: I was feeling particularly inspired, so it's a timely update in thanks for all your support. I've also been writing some drabbles lately on tumblr (username justadram) and you can read them there.

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><p>Chapter Twenty-Four<p>

The Martell contingent is ushered into the smaller gathering hall that Jon prefers to use until the coronation, for he thinks the Great Hall too big and Sansa suspects he thinks the Iron Throne as ugly as Daenerys did. The room is already thick with tension before they ever enter, as reports reach the Keep of movements in Daenerys' camp. Sansa knows it should be the movement of those of her men who are well enough to leave, making their initial preparations towards that end, but even she finds it hard to believe that the Dragon Queen departs from Westeros and this war is over. She can't blame Jon's subjects for their disquiet.

The oak doors, banded in black iron swing open and the new source of intrigue pushes inside, their olive skin tones standing out amongst the host of pasty faced northerners that line the light red stone walls of the Red Keep. Sansa is not as familiar with House Martell as she is with the other great houses of Westeros, but at first glance, they seem every bit as fearsome and bold as Petyr painted them to be in his lessons. They are late to come to Jon's aid, but none of them look the least bit bashful, as they move towards where Jon and Sansa sit together, Sansa's hand buried in Ghost's warm ruff.

What strikes Sansa immediately is the number of women in this group the Martells have sent to aid in the fight against the now departing Dragon Queen. Her eyes dart over them as their names are announced in turn, and she can see that these women are no doubt as capable as they appear confident. Obara Sand holds herself like a warrior. She is big boned and tall, and though someone will have stripped them of their weapons for their audience with the king, she looks as if she would be more comfortable with one in her grip. Sarella Sand reminds Sansa of Oberyn Martell with piercing dark eyes, a sharp nose, and short, glossy, black hair. She is not as big as her sister, but she has an intense look of curiosity and daring about her, which Sansa imagines serves her just as well as strength does her older sister.

These then are the infamous Sand Sakes, the bastard daughters of Oberyn, and as such they would be fitting defenders of a bastard king, should their stated intentions be true. Although two of them—Elia and Obella—do not look old enough to be sent to fight a war. Nevertheless, the young girls manage to appear more impressive than the two men House Martell has delivered: Trystane, the youngest son of the now deceased Doran Martell, who still has an undeniably boyish look about him, and Ser Gascoyne, who Sansa has never heard of before this moment.

It is when the host of dark haired newcomers parts, however, that Sansa's breath catches in her throat. She is no longer a child and she is regrettably disfigured by a scar that mars her fair beauty, but Sansa knows her without question to be the former princess. Myrcella is Cersei Lannister risen from her mouldering grave and bedecked in Sunspear orange.

She is dead, Sansa promises herself. She is dead and gone to whatever rest or torment the gods might deem fit. The reminder helps steady her. Sansa manages to hold her countenance, but there are some in the hall who do not. There is more than one gasp at the announcement of the former princess' name.

Trystane takes the young lady's arm, leading her forwards, presenting her to the seated king and his queen, and Sansa releases her grip on Ghost.

"Lady Myrcella," Sansa says with a practiced smile, as Tyrstane bows and Myrcella makes a low, regal curtsey. "I have not seen Lady Myrcella since we were both children," Sansa says, turning to Jon, whose face is blank, though she can feel his wariness echo in her chest like a distant roll of thunder.

She can help him with this. She _knows_ Myrcella, whereas the former princess must be just a dim memory to him, just a little girl, who could not keep her eyes off their brother.

Myrcella may be all blond hair and green eyes, beautifully attired in a gown not entirely befitting the cold that hangs over King's Landing, a seeming non-threat compared to the four Sand Snakes that stand feet astride behind her, but they have kept their former princess a secret for a reason. One which might have consequences for Jon's reign.

"We had understood that the lady was the unfortunate victim of an assassination," Jon says.

Supposedly carried out by Aegon's men before his forces ever reached King's Landing, laid siege to it, and captured the little king.

"Yes, there was a Lannister death, but it wasn't mine," Myrcella responds with her head held high. Facing Jon's questioning, Sansa can see and hear Jaime's courage in her, as much as she also remembers the sweetness of the girl that left for Dorne. It was a sweetness that seemed so out of place in any child of the Lannister twins, and Tommen and Myrcella shared it both. Surely she has changed, as Sansa has as well, but she hopes there is some sweetness left in Myrcella, for though he had nothing to do with it, if his daughter has done more than survived, if she has thrived and grown good and upright, it might be Jaime's only legacy.

"It seemed best not to correct the misunderstanding," Trystane speaks.

"The lady's safety has always been paramount," the eldest Sand Snake puts in, and Jon nods his assent.

If it was not Myrcella who died, it must have been the other girl sent abroad with her—Rosamund. _Her_ safety was not paramount. It was a ruse no doubt arranged by House Martell to protect their interests and Myrcella's handmaiden paid the heaviest price. It would be wise of Jon to watch these Martells carefully. Some if not all of them must be fair hands at playing this game.

"We're pleased to see that we were mistaken then," Sansa says, as she stands and steps towards Myrcella to embrace her.

After a moment's hesitation, Myrcella's arms go round Sansa's back and the young girl squeezes her.

Sansa meant it as a performance, playing to the room of anxious onlookers, for the Martells have arrived here with the supposed daughter of King Robert at the most inopportune time, when Jon means to be crowned king of Westeros in three days. It must be made very clear that Jon and Sansa welcome their presence here as _subjects_, for they can't afford to fight yet another war, when the Others encroach from the north.

But when Myrcella clings to her, Sansa wonders whether their experiences have not been so different, and the artifice of her embrace melts into something more sincere. Myrcella's face shows one brutality to which she was exposed. It would be unsurprising if she has at times known fear, during the years she has been separated from her home and made a pawn in this game, even if her intended looks a gentle young man.

"Welcome," Sansa adds, as she pulls back to look Myrcella in the eyes. "Welcome home."

"Dorne is Lady Myrcella's home," Trystane says, holding his hand out to the girl.

Sansa does not give her time to take it, linking arms instead with the girl and pulling her in to her side like a long lost friend. "It is still good to be back, no?"

Myrcella does not look to Trystane before giving Sansa a small smile that tugs on the scar only partly hidden by her long, loose hair. It isn't Jaime's empty grin—the one that didn't reach his eyes, which he showed in company—but it is a smile that reminds Sansa of him nonetheless.

"Excuse me, Your Grace," Sansa says, looking to Jon. "Lady Myrcella has had a long journey, and you will not want us chirping like birds, while you make plans for war." It helps to play the giggling fool. Jon's men will not buy such nonsense, knowing her as they do by now, but the Martells might be fooled. She only needs a little time alone with Myrcella, so that she can judge whether the Martells mean to fight for Jon or fight against him. She bends her head, though Myrcella is nearly as tall as she, to whisper conspiratorially, "Your chamber won't yet be ready, but we shall go to mine."

She can feel the eyes of the Martells on her as she walks Myrcella from the hall. As they leave the small crowd behind, Sansa says something only meant for Myrcella's ears—the only good news she has for the girl after so long an absence from King's Landing.

"If I had known you were onboard the ships, I would have prevented your uncle from leaving for Casterly Rock not more than an hour ago." Myrcella stiffens and slows her steps, and Sansa places her other hand over the girl's. "I mean to say your uncle Tyrion." It is possible that word of Jaime's death has not spread widely yet, which would mean Cersei's death is presumed but not confirmed as well. "He is your only remaining family and he would be so glad to see you."

It is the kindest way she knows how to potentially break the news of her loss to the girl, for it saves Myrcella from having to acknowledge whether this is a fresh sorrow or one for which she is prepared. Whether or not the Martells have allowed Myrcella to hear word of the widely spread accusations of incest, Jaime was kin and Cersei was her mother. Sansa knows what it is to lose everything with frightening speed, but just as Jon was restored to her, perhaps Tyrion can be some comfort to Myrcella.

Sansa is doubly glad that Jon let her decide Tyrion's fate. Tyrion will help his niece if she is in need of it and these Martells do not have her best interests at heart, the way he once tried to help her, for he has a weakness for those in need that one would not expect of the little crooked man.

"I shall fetch him back for you. He would only come back here for you, I suspect."

Myrcella draws breath. "My lord husband is very good to me, you should understand." Sansa must not be wearing her mask the way she should, for Myrcella to guess at Sansa's concerns, or the girl is as intelligent as her uncle. "And his family has come here with the intention of fighting not for the throne, but for the king. I have told them I don't want the throne. I want nothing to do with it. It's caused nothing but sorrow for my family."

Sansa nods, as Myrcella's eyes brim with tears, and she hopes with a pang that the need to master this situation for Jon and the kingdom's good does not cause Myrcella any more pain. They have all known a great deal too much pain.

…

Jon rubs his face roughly, as he kicks the heavy door shut behind him and winces at the thud it makes. Sansa has been abed for several hours and it wouldn't do to wake her.

He has been in meetings with his council and the leaders of the various factions that make up his alliance of knights and warriors, taking supper over maps and long winded opinions. The Martells, though they were late enough in their arrival to miss the fighting, argued for some time over the decision to allow the Dragon Queen to depart from the Seven Kingdoms unharmed, demanding vengeance for Quentyn's death, and Jon's anger at their untimely demands reflected in Ghost's restless pacing and noiseless growls.

Asha was less quiet about her displeasure, for although she does not scorn battle or fear a test of her mettle, she is eager to settle this business in the south, head north and face the enemy there, so she might eventually reclaim the Iron Islands for herself. Not everyone's goals align so perfectly with his own, but he only needs them to follow him north with swords in hand. Should he or any of them survive, he will deal with their other wants at the conclusion of the war.

They will depart two days after the coronation, barring only a betrayal of Daenerys' vows to leave—an avowal in which he suspects no one save himself takes any real stock. And despite hours of debate, there is still an endless stream of things to be done. There are supplies to be gathered, orders to be sent out on black wings for those not assembled here to begin marching north, and plans to be sketched for how and where they will face their frozen enemy. He is a young man, a young king, and yet, it is an exhausting business that has left him feeling twice his age.

Planning for this icy war has already taken him away from Sansa, as surely as the war will, and all he wants is to be alone with her even if it is while she sleeps. Her back is to him with her linen shift hanging off one shoulder, her red hair spread over the pillow, and he can just make out the swoop of her waist and rise of her hip, as he works at his doublet, pulling at it restlessly until it is unfastened and he can shrug it off, letting it drop to the floor. He fights with his boots and tugs on his breeches and yanks his tunic over his head all with the impatience of a green boy, until he is divested of his clothes. It is only then that he finally takes some care, when he eases into the bed, not wanting to disrupt her dreams.

Despite his best efforts, she rolls over to face him, dragging the furs with her until she looks up at him with a grin tugging at her lips. "Husband."

His heart stutters in his chest at the endearment, for that's what it sounds to him in her gentle tone. "I woke you."

She shakes her head. "No, I've been waiting for you."

And he has been waiting for her.

He bends to kiss her brow, lingering against her soft skin. This is what he misses when they are separated—the quiet moments, the understanding between them—he thinks, as he smoothes her hair back from her face. "You should be asleep."

"I can't stop thinking. I can't convince myself the war is over."

Jon sighs, sinking further into the mattress tick until his head rests against his pillow. "The war isn't over."

The muscles around her mouth and eyes tightens, the playfulness of a moment earlier disappearing with distressing speed. "Is the war that's coming worse then? Is that what you mean to say?"

"Yes. I'm afraid so." He scrubs his face again, staring up at the stone ceiling. "We could have used her bloody dragons."

Her hand wraps around his bicep, holding fast. "Jon, don't wish her back here. Her or her dreadful beasts. I pray she flies away on them and never comes back."

He can't be truly sorry to see Daenerys go and he had no love for her scaled dragons, so while he feels certain they would have been useful, he understands Sansa's sentiment, and as she digs her nails into his flesh, he wants nothing more than to kiss her until the look of fear his words have put there is erased from her lovely face.

The two of them are still so fresh, such a new thing, that thoughts of her churn to the surface throughout the day and make him forget for a space what is going on around him. All night he has tugged on his hair, trying to keep thoughts of her thighs and the wetness between them out of his head. It is his duty to remain vigilant and focus on his subjects' survival, but his body has other plans.

"Come here," he murmurs, reaching around to sink his hand into the thick hair at the base of her neck and drag her up towards his lips.

He meets her halfway, when she is close enough that he can feel her warm breath against his lips, lifting his head off the pillow and capturing her lips with his own. She braces herself against his chest, her fingers curling into the scattering of hair there, as he tilts her head and dips his tongue between her lips. There's a sensation of freefall in his gut, when he hears her moan and feels her hitch her leg over his thigh.

He can feel her: hot and wet.

If he wasn't king, he would lose himself in his beautiful new wife for days, weeks. He might never leave this bedchamber, not even to take sustenance. It would be unbefitting, indulgent, and delicious.

His mouth hangs open, his eyes still closed, as she pulls back just enough to press her forehead against his. "Thank you," she whispers.

He opens his eyes and cocks one brow at her. "For the kiss?" he teases, his voice low, as he skims his hand down her neck, over her back to the rise of her rounded arse.

"For letting me choose." She runs her thumb over his arched brow, easing away his levity. She means to be serious, so he composes himself, flattening his hand into the small of her back so it will not be tempted to roam. "I know you hate the Lannisters, and you could have sent him away. You could have banished him, but you let me choose."

"You're the one that lived with them Sansa. Of course it was your decision. He was yours to dispose of as you chose. Or elevate to a lordship, as the case might be."

Her eyes spark with something. "I don't deserve you, Jon Snow," she whispers, as she dances her fingers through his hair, petting him like she does his direwolf.

"I rather thought it was the other way around."

If the feel of her body lounging partly atop his wasn't enough, the soft, lingering kisses she places on either side of his mouth, on his chin and just below have hardened him to the point of painful distraction. He's ready to be done with his self-imposed restriction on wandering hands, when she tightens her fingers in his hair and bites her lower lip, looking torn between triumph and contrition.

"What is it?"

"You told Tyrion to make himself scarce, but I've sent for him." Jon frowns, ready to ask her why the Lord Lannister could not be missed for one day, but she hurries on, "He is Lady Myrcella's only kin. I promised her she might see him."

Lady Myrcella's arrival has changed any number of things.

He rolls them over, pinning her beneath him—all softness and warmth barely concealed by a shift she should be free of. He nudges her head to the side, to speak softly against the shell of her ear. "There's nothing I can say to that, is there?"

"I'm sorry, Jon," she whispers, her words accompanied by the feathery graze of her nails up his bare sides.

"Are you?" he asks, taking the lobe of her ear between his teeth.

Her nails bite into his flesh. "Yes, if you're displeased with me." But he's not. She's done the kind thing in reunited niece and uncle, and it isn't only her strength and mastery of the game that he loves. She punctuates her apology with a hook of her leg over his hip. "If I've added to your worries with the Martells turning up with a princess."

Never, he thinks, touching their temples together, so she hears his declaration. _Never_. She could never add to his worries. "Well, now we know why they delayed, don't we?" he sighs, his head falling to the crook of her neck, where she smells so perfectly like home, and moves his body against hers, the way he would like to without this shift between them. The way he wants to move inside of her. "Do they mean to press Myrcella's claim?"

They swore their fealty to the king before his council, reaffirming the promise to aid in his fight, which they had sent upon his bloodless entry into King's Landing, and yet he harbors doubts. No one can afford a fight for this throne. The kingdoms can't afford it. They must turn north. They must do so together.

He gathers her closer to him, sliding an arm underneath her body to knit them together.

She strokes his back, her long fingers painting ceaseless patterns over his weary, flexing muscles, as he keeps up the slow rub of their bodies. "She says not, and Tyrion will understand it would be suicide for them to attempt it. He might help prevent any such notions from taking root." She's still too coherent, so he kisses her neck, pulling at her pulse, making her head toss back until her words come breathily. "We will make good use of his assets, Jon. Not just his Lannister gold."

"But why bring a lady such as her into a war?" he asks, as he scrabbles with her shift, trying to free her of it without letting her go.

The shift bunches under her arms, baring her sloping breasts to him, and as his mouth closes around one rosy nipple, his hum of relief and hers of pleasure melt together.

It's a much more satisfying way to discuss troubling potentialities with his hips cradled in Sansa's than around a table of red faced men, but he's done with words and her answer is almost lost on him, as his fingers quest between her legs: "Not a war. Home, Jon."

He needs her. Needs her assurances. Her skills at this game. Her knowledge of these southron subjects with whom he is so uncertain. He needs her love and he needs her body. He won't have any of these things soon, carrying with him only her memory and her love, so he must take them now. Sleep can wait.


	25. Chapter 25

**Chapter Rating**: M for sexual content  
><strong>Chapter Word Count<strong>: 4980  
><strong>Chapter Summary<strong>: It is not so much his discomfort as a Targaryen or as a bastard that gives him pause, but the notion that Ygritte was always right and that he knows nothing. The radical notion that men are not made to bend the knee.  
><strong>Author's Note<strong>: I was bound and determined to deliver another chapter promptly and while I succeeded on that front, this one really took it out of me. I suspect you'll be able to guess why after reading it. I plugged along through the tough bits, not in small part because of the kudos, alerts, favorites, and thoughtful comments you all have left. Thank you, as always. It is food for this fanfic author's soul.

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><p>Chapter Twenty-Five<p>

Something revolts in Jon against the scores of people who stand before his new throne, which is still raised on the iron dais, ready to bend the knee each in turn following his hasty coronation. It is not so much his discomfort as a Targaryen or as a bastard that gives him pause, but the notion that Ygritte was always right and that he knows nothing. The radical notion that men are not made to bend the knee.

The Iron Throne has been melted down as Daenerys suggested. It is being reformed by smiths into weapons that will be used to fight in the North, used to save the Seven Kingdoms, and it its place, he sits a throne of strong, bone white weirwood banded in black iron. Draped over the back of the throne is a red silk coverlet Sansa stayed up the whole night previous to embroider with a white direwolf. Her fingers were pink and tender by the end of it and he kissed them, sucking them into his mouth, as she attempted to help him dress for the momentous morning and clucked her tongue indulgently at his efforts to seduce her back into his bed instead.

As nearly one thousand subjects look on, there are no dragons on which to gaze, save himself. None on the coverlet Sansa eagerly embroidered and none hanging on the walls of the Great Hall, though it was suggested their skulls be brought up for this day. None outside the gates of the city either, for Daenerys and her dragons were seen taking flight on the previous night just as a delivery of supplies and two maesters arrived inside her camp.

With the dragons gone, they can all breathe easier, but he wasn't willing to do anything that might turn his subjects' thoughts back to the scaled beasts. He saw the look on Sansa's face at the proposition and it echoed his own feelings.

Something revolts in Jon against Sansa Stark bending the knee. Not just to him, but to any man. However, she requested in council that she not only swear her allegiance like the rest, but that she also be the first to do so, that the North be allowed to pledge its allegiance through her first, and though Jon baulked, she would not be deterred.

_I am the Lady of Winterfell, Warden of the North. Why should I not bend the knee as a loyal subject?_

Asha smirked. _Perhaps because you're none of those things. Your lord husband, our king, is the Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North. Is that not how you people do things?_

Jon cast a furious glare at Asha, though he knows she only pokes at a tradition she despises herself.

The problem was the suggestion that his wife, the queen, needed to promise him anything, when she already gave him everything and more than he never hoped to have. They are blood, kin, and bonded by fate and the gods. _You know that isn't my complaint. Winterfell will always be…_

He had to stop himself from saying _my_ _sister's_, and as an unwelcome feeling of shameful guilt he thought he'd set aside welled up inside of him with all the eyes of his council upon him, Sansa placed her hand over his own.

_I thought it would be a strong example for the North, but if you don't wish it or if you can't abide my being the first to pledge, I'll do as you see fit. Always, Your Grace._

And of course his objections were shelved, because if she wishes it, then he wants to allow it and as she smiles up at him through her lashes, the sun slanting in through the western windows and catching the fiery red of her bowed head, and her Stark grey skirts billow around her, he hopes at least that he's made her happy. She's most likely correct that this is an important gesture for the North, and since it requires Sansa to bend the knee to him, he swears to himself that in return for his subjects' bending of the knee, he will not be a king who reigns unjustly over others. He will be a leader and champion for his people. He will be their protector. Not so much as a father but as a brother, the big brother he no longer is until Arya or Bran or Rickon can—if ever—be recovered.

The Queen's ballroom, where they celebrate the day's events, feels overly warm for winter with the mirrored wall sconces reflecting back all the light in the room twofold, contributing to his distracted and scattered thoughts, and he misses a step in the dance, nearly trodding on Sansa's foot. He takes her shoulders in his hands, stilling her graceful movements, though the other dancers continue around them and the musicians play on.

Sansa looks amused at the forced pause. "I should have spent more time with you when we were young, practicing at this. You will never be a very fine dancer."

"Do you regret it?"

Jon isn't sure what he means, what he intends asking her such a question, but her eyes go serious as she murmurs her response, "I regret a great many things."

"Don't," he insists, as he pulls her a step back, away from the dancers, letting them pass by them, as he slides his hands down the full sleeves of her gown and takes her hands in his. "I don't regret it." Not his lack of dancing skills and not the time she spent playing at dolls rather than scampering after him the way Arya always did. If their relationship would have been different, the relationship they have now would have been out of the question. He can't regret any of it.

"I don't want you to regret my being king either. I mean to make you proud. Everyone here," he says, nodding towards the room full of subjects who make merry behind her. He knows they celebrate the Dragon Queen's departure as much if not more than his crowning, but it is good to have a day to give thanks and drink together. As much as the coronation made him uncomfortable, he understood that this day was a necessary for a multitude of reasons. "To repay them for that ceremony earlier."

"No one minded, Jon," she assures him, her thumb running over the burned skin of his hand. "You're the king they want. And you looked just as I dreamt you would," she adds with a soft smile. "Sitting up there with Ghost at your side." She releases his hand and reaches up to brush his crown with her fingertips. "With a crown amongst your curls."

He feels himself beginning to flush at her touch and the dreamy quality of her voice. He drags her hand away from his hair.

"Am I not allowed?"

"You are allowed anything, but I don't think it would be considered appropriate if I carry you away the way I did on the night of our wedding feast."

Sansa bites her lower lip. "Let me worry about what is appropriate, Your Grace."

He pinches her in the the narrow of her waist for her cheek before turning her around to lead her towards the high table, where they are seated beside each other, and he whispers in her ear, "You'll be right as always, I'm sure, about whether it was the appropriate thing to do, having you swear your allegiance first. You always know what is right. You'll be better at this than I am." Her head twists to glance sideways at him. Confusion knits her brows. "While I am gone in the North, you'll be a better fit for that weirwood throne than I ever could be."

He's no more said it then she goes stiff at his side, and though he does not understand the source of her discomfort or displeasure, for he had meant it as a compliment to her abilities, she barely speaks a word to him as they sit side by side. She is gracious and proper with those around her, as always, but she is strangely unresponsive to him—a fact which no one save himself seems to notice. Her tongue is silent, but there is also no sound of her inside his head and none of her emotions echoing in his chest. It is as if there is a wall between them as thick as the Wall he once defended.

Her silence only makes the night seem more interminable, and he tosses his crown of brass and iron down on the sideboard of his bedchamber with less care than he should, when it is over, his nerves frayed by the time they are alone and enveloped in the gloom of the sole guttering light of one candle.

Her face is obscured, her back turned, as she stands before the looking glass, and finally speaks. "You're leaving me behind." He freezes, his hand poised at the back of his black tunic, waiting to pull it over his head and throw it to the ground in frustration. "You're going North without me, leaving me behind here in this wretched city, when all I wanted was to go North, when all I wanted since you found me was to be with you."

Her voice is tight with accusation.

"Sansa, I can't take you with me. It will be much too dangerous."

"Have things not already been dangerous? Battles and frozen camps and dragons and now a teem of Unsullied suffering from greyscale just outside the gates? Jon, all I've known sine I left Winterfell is danger."

It's been much too dangerous and he's hated that she's been exposed to any of it. "Yes, of course, but this war will be no place for a woman." He thinks of their undead eyes—ice blue, nothing like the cool warmth of Sansa's eyes—and the piles of bodies set aflame to save them from coming back to life, condemned to that glowing blue.

She huffs, wrapping her arms around her waist, and despite her defensive posture, he dares a few steps towards her.

"But you'll gladly find a place for Asha and the Martell women. Is it because I wear gowns and embroider silks?"

It's because you're my wife, he wants to say, but he knows that isn't fair. Now that she's his and he is hers, now that they've been together and he knows what it is to be inside her, he is lit by an even more intense need to protect her, to tuck her away, where she can't be harmed, but there is no such place in this world and his fears are his burden. He will not allow himself to cage her in because of them.

"No. You're more important to me than they ever could be. But if something happened to you out of my own selfish need to have you close to me, advising me how best to proceed, when I am lost…That would be the worst kind of selfishness, Sansa."

"Sharing your bedroll."

He's not accustomed to her lashing out at him like this, but as he draws close, he finally can better feel the real tumult of her emotions that her cool, cutting comments do very little to expose. He better understands. She's afraid. She loves him and she's terribly afraid.

He comes close enough to touch her, but keeps his arms at his side, waiting for her to look at him. "You know that isn't what makes you indispensible to me. But, I'm a newly crowned king ready to march North, leaving the rest of my kingdoms without a ruler. I need you here. I need you to rule in my absence."

"Choose someone else," she offers, though she must know that's an impossibility.

Who else could he trust?

"It's our duty to serve them. You'll best be able to do that here, ensuring that order is maintained, that mouths are fed, and justice served."

"You're as dutiful as our father," she says with a sniff before turning away from the looking glass and unwinding her arms from around her middle. She does not sound as pleased with his dutiful nature as she has in the past.

She presses her fingers against the darkened glass, as if she might not otherwise be steady on her feet, and there it is again, the stab of fear—her fear—mixing with his own anxiety over leaving her, over this war that may part them forever. She cuts her eyes towards him, staring into the middle of his chest, where he feels the pain, and he can see that her beautiful blue eyes shimmer with unspilt tears.

He swallows, forcing himself to speak. "If I don't survive it will be up to you…"

"Stop," she pleads, her voice breaking. "You can't say that. It's hard enough as it is, trying to be brave, without you saying such things."

She still hasn't looked him in the eye, but he can't wait any longer and he hauls her to his chest, his palm cradling the back of her head, pressing her cheek into his shoulder. A sob wracks her body, and he doesn't know how to tell her how much he wants to come back to her. He doesn't dream of a hero's death. He dreams of old age with her at his side. He dreams of their children. That's all he wants. But only the gods know how much he thirsts for those things.

He tips her head up, his thumb under her chin, and she blinks up at him, her mouth contorting. "Don't make me be brave tonight, Jon. I'll be brave for you tomorrow, but not tonight."

She's been braver than him, since her fate largely has been in his hands since the moment she decided to come with him and had nothing but her words to protect her. He'll be brave for her tonight. He won't burden her with his darkest visions of what might become of her, should he lose and the Others march further south.

He'll give. The giving is always better anyway.

He kisses her and her lips are already tracked with salty tears. He tugs at her lip, grazing it with his teeth, pressing into the kiss as fiercely as his desperation demands. She opens her lips to him, and he groans at the feeling of her tongue pushing to meet his. There should have been weeks of nothing but knowing her kisses, of anticipating all the rest, but everything has happened in a rush by necessity, and it makes him furious.

He breaks their kiss to turn her around by her shoulders, his hands working to free the laces at her lower back. Even this is hurried and feels more furtive than it should, but he needs her in his bed, spread before him now, for dawn is always upon them much too soon.

Her shoulders still rise and fall, but no longer from tears by the time her gown slides to the floor and she kicks her satin slippers off. She glances over her shoulder at him, as his hands grip her hips, pulling her flush against him, so she can feel him.

Her shift is thin and were the light better, he suspects it would be nigh on translucent, but he needs more than just the hint of her curves. He bends to bunch the hem of the shift in his hand and draws it slowly up to her hip, exposing the curve of her arse. She wears no smallclothes.

"You do this to torment me."

She holds his gaze, her lip caught between her teeth, looking unrepentant. "Are you going to take me to bed, husband?"

His response is most probably lost in the rustle of fabric, as he tows her shift over her head and sweeps her into his arms as bare as her nameday except for the creamy silken stockings held up by sweet little bows he'd like to untie with his teeth. Atop the furs, she draws her leg up and he finds a home between her hips. He is already hard and he can feel the warmth of her through his breeches, but he wants so much more than the friction of their bodies pressed against each other and the aching promise of what awaits him between her legs.

She gives voice to his frustration, her fingers twining in his tunic. "You have too many clothes on."

Yes, and he could fumble with his breeches and strip himself of his smallclothes and bury himself inside of her, but he wants wants her to cry with her own pleasure first.

Leaning on his forearm, he nuzzles between her breasts and thumbs her peaked nipple. "Let me try something, love."

She hums, arching under his touch, as his hand slips down and trails above her curls. He looks up at her, but her eyes are closed, her kiss swollen lips slightly parted, when his fingers slide into the wetness already gathering there. He knows what it feels like when she's wet like that and he's inside of her. He hisses a curse against the soft skin of her belly, kissing lower, as his fingers trace her and slide, teasing the source of her pleasure.

She whines, when his lips form to the curve of her hipbone. He nudges it with his nose, kissing lower still and her leg twitches underneath him. On the night of their marriage, she was too nervous for this. She is tense still. That must be corrected.

He slips one hand under her soft thigh to open her up to him, while his other stretches up to lay flat against her belly. She feels too tightly strung beneath his touch, her muscles taut.

"Where would you like to be?" he asks, breathing heavily against her.

She draws a shaky breath and her eyes open, her fair lashes fluttering. He can see the flush bloom on her cheeks, as she watches him between her thighs. "Anywhere with you."

But she dreams of the North, just as he does. He knows it, and perchance it is the same dream. Winterfell rebuilt, the snow blowing about their faces with early spring flowers breaking through the frost, Ghost standing at their feet, and the sound of voices—not ghosts, but children, laughing.

"Think of us in Winterfell." Where he imagines she would be happiest and feel safest, instead of in this city that holds so many dark memories.

She gasps, when his nose parts her curls. She tastes like salt and juniper. Like she's sprung from the forests of the North.

His suggestion might be of some help. His beautiful wife's legs fall further open of their own accord and her hands sink into his hair, fisting it as he begins to lathe her with his tongue. Her nails rake his scalp, while she murmurs nonsense that makes Jon redouble his efforts, dragging his tongue over the spot that makes her back arch and her body move shyly against his mouth. His fingers join his mouth, moving inside of her, and he can feel the tightening spiral of tension of a better sort building.

And when her thighs snap closed around his head and he hears her muffled pleas to the gods, Jon can't suppress his smile. She's never tossed so hard or so long under his touch, and he's reluctant to stop until her hands press on his forehead, forcing him away.

"You taste like home," he says, as he kneels in the furs, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand before unfastening his breeches.

"Jon," she chides, pressing her lips together in embarrassment and covering her eyes with one shaking hand.

"My enthusiasm embarrasses you," he chuckles, as he works his breeches down over his hips and kicks himself free of them, repeating the process with his smallclothes.

She sits up and helps him pull his tunic over his head, her hands settling on his sides once he is unclothed. "A bit," she says, a little smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. "You must help me forget it."

He complies, covering her body with his own, and grasps himself, rubbing himself over her. She's sensitive enough from his mouth that she gasps and jerks at the slightest touch.

"I'll make you forget," he grits out, as the tip of him presses inside of her. "By making you come like that again."

"What?" she asks, but her wide-eyed question turns into a heavy sigh, as he thickly thrusts to the limit of his length.

Deep inside of her, he grips her thigh, tilting her body to accommodate him better, to improve the angle, so that he might feel her tighten around him once more.

"I've thought of this ever since you denied me this morning."

"It would be rude to be late to your own coronation, husband," she sighs, as he eases a hand between their bodies to feel where they are connected.

"You feel that?" he asks, and she gives a quick nod, her lashes fanning her flushed cheeks. He's wet with her and it feels so good. "Bloody hells."

He moves slowly inside of her and it's exquisite torture. Her fingers tracing the muscles of his back, her silken heel hitting the small of his back with each thrust, and her lips and teeth finding his neck, his shoulder, his bearded chin, and his mouth have him holding on to his composure by the thinnest of threads.

If he embarrassed her earlier, she seems to have no qualms about the suggestions, the eager encouragements he purrs in her ear now. She is hot, slick, as perfect as anything he's ever known, and with each stroke, each hot kiss, each panted confession, she grows more so. Until he has to grit his teeth. Until she's whimpering his name like a broken chant. Until he is rewarded for his persistence and she comes apart a second time—another first—shaking beneath him and panting for breath.

"Gods, Sansa. Gods," he groans in appreciation.

He closes his mouth around the tip of her breast once more, sucking and kissing, and gives leash to his need to chase his own completion. Her legs wrap around him and her fingers dig into the curls at the nape of his neck, holding him to her breast, as his hips snap quickly against her pliant body. She's still shuddering, when he loses his rhythm and spends himself inside of her.

He makes to roll off of her and her hands grip his arse.

"Not just yet. Stay with me."

He kisses her. Slow.

"We're getting better at that."

She frowns at him. "Were we so terrible?"

He bites her shoulder, growling his answer into her flesh, "It was better than I imagined it would be, and in my considerable weakness I imagined wicked things."

She halfheartedly swats at his back. "I don't believe that of you, Jon Snow. You are too restrained to allow yourself such indulgence."

"I will happily allow myself to indulge in you."

He feels her slow exhale against his neck before she says, "Two days is all we have left."

Not enough time to learn all the things about her body he wants to know. Since the day they were married, there has not been enough time with the Stranger always awaiting them around every corner.

He's softening and he slips free of her, despite her request. He rolls onto his side and pulls her with him, away from the mess they've made.

He smoothes the dampened hair at her temples away from her face and tries to memorize how she looks—her hair blowsy, her lips and cheeks stained pink, a flush upon her small breasts, and her eyes giant pools. He'll need this memory.

"You won't be alone, Sansa. I've sent for Sam."

"Sam's coming?"

She knows Sam's as good as a brother to him.

"He'll think the world of you. Although, your beauty might leave him a bit tongue tied." Sansa hitches her leg over him and tucks her head into his neck, hiding her face. "You'll get along brilliantly. I'll come back to find the pair of you didn't even miss me."

"Just come back."

…

Sansa thinks it a farce that the winter sun shines cheerily down on the snow covered ground on this of all days. Jon and his forces are assembled outside the Dragon Gate. They are leaving, and she stands, wrapped in fur, watching with her heart so high in her throat, she can scarce draw breath.

There have been half a dozen moments since they awoke this morn that Sansa almost broke down. Upon waking Jon, who slept so soundly on the pillow beside her, and watching his sleepy, grey eyes scan her face. Tucking his fur lined gloves into his satchel to keep him warm and protect his hands. When he pressed the gift of a mother of pearl handled dagger into her hands, which might prove as useful as the fur he gave her upon their wedding. Over stewed oats and dried lady apples—an extravagence to see them off—where she observed that some of the men's hands shook, as they brought the spoons up to their mouths, despite the fires that blazed in the hall. Feeding Ghost a rasher of bacon for the last time from her hands, his warm tongue wet and purposefully careful in taking the proffered food. And when Jon's sweet squire walked by, bundled up to the chin for the cold ahead, looking too young to face undead horrors.

But she did not give way. She promised Jon bravery, and she has schooled herself for long enough to be controlled and composed that she can summon on her reserves of strength and give him what he needs. For she knows he needs her to be brave, his forces need her to be brave, and those who are being left behind need it as well.

Still, she feels as if everyone fears she will crumble, as they sidestep her by several feet, hurrying out to join the ranks. Except for Asha, who bumps her shoulder into Sansa and raises her eyebrows towards where Jon stands beside Ghost and his sorrel mount—a parting gift from the Dragon Queen upon the fulfillment of Jon's promise to send supplies and maesters to aid those suffering from greyscale that came bearing a name, Dracarys, the only dragon Jon will likely ever ride.

"I'll keep him from scarring up that pretty face of his any worse."

"Just keep him from killing himself in some ridiculous feat of heroics, and I'll be grateful," Sansa says low enough that no one else will hear, and for once Asha neither scowls at her nor wears a teasing grin.

"Aye. I'll do my best." She pats her sword and tilts her head in closer to add, "Take heart: we have the best of it, escaping this pit of a city."

Sansa hates it here, but even she can't believe what Asha's says. All the same, she appreciates it. There is little that can be said in truth to ease her worries, but she accepts any kindness on this bleakest of days. On the day that Jon will ride away from her.

And as they kick at their horses' sides and those on foot begin to trudge forward, Jon looks back. He only nods—a stiff, formal gesture that hints at nothing—but Sansa hears him.

_I love you._

Come back to me.

_I'll try._

Jon. Jon. Jon.

It takes inhuman strength to root her feet to the ground.

They're already disappearing over the horizon like ants on the march, when there's a soft touch to her elbow and she jerks from the unexpected contact. The world has seemed silent since she could no longer make out Jon amongst his men, and she has felt disembodied, floating away from this nightmare. The touch has awakened her.

"Excuse me, Your Grace, but you didn't seem to hear me."

Sansa turns to see Myrcella here to see off her husband too. She shivers visibly in the cold, a cold that does not touch Sansa, and Sansa thinks for a moment to slide her fur about the young woman's shoulders, but Jon gave this to her and she does not have the wherewithal yet to be that generous.

"Yes, forgive me, I'm…" But Sansa can think of no words to describe what she feels at this moment. It is as if she has been cut in two and forced to forfeit the most important part of herself.

Myrcella extends her hand palm up and her green eyes meet Sansa's unfocused gaze. "I am lost, Your Grace."

So am I, Sansa thinks. Lost. Horribly, horribly lost.

"I was a child when I left and I find myself losing my way, forgetting the streets and muddling up the corridors until I'm turned around. Will you lead me back?"

Of course there is a guard that still stands behind them, waiting to escort all of the ladies that have come out back to the Red Keep. There is no chance of Lady Myrcella losing her way today. Her question is a yet another kindness.

It has been her intent to reign in Jon's absence with as much kindness and compassion as she knows their people need and deserve after years of war and a cruel winter upon them. But perhaps she will rely on their kindnesses as much as they will rely on hers.

Sansa lets Myrcella thread her arm through her own, and she turns her back on the disappearing line of men. She can't afford to look back.


	26. Chapter 26

**Chapter Summary**: Sam is certainly not what Sansa pictured, when she imagined the men who guarded the Wall.

**Author's Note**: Forgive me for the long intermission in updates. School is out and I'm updating my fics on a much more regular schedule now, AWT included.

* * *

><p>Chapter Twenty-Six<p>

Jon was right. When Sam arrives in King's Landing, he is a bit tongue-tied, though she doubts the cause is her beauty. Rather, she suspects Sam is naturally shy and a tad awkward, and she loves Jon all the more for choosing this slightly this man to be his closest friend.

Sam is certainly not what Sansa pictured, when she imagined the men who guarded the Wall. She imagined strong men, tall men like Jon or her uncle Benjen. She even imagined hard, dangerous men, but while Sam is quite clearly intelligent and kind and good, he's nothing like what she expected. He is soft and she wonders whether he can sew a ragged wound without turning pale from the effort of not fainting. Jon gave no hint. She loves him for that too.

And if he is a little tongue-tied and blushes in her company, Sansa still feels instantly at ease in his company and certain that she can trust him. Since Jon left, it has been a game of pretending. She has had to pretend that she was not afraid, that she was confident, that this turn of fate has not shaken her, but perhaps Maester Samwell is someone with whom she can be herself and slip free of the face the Queen of Westeros wears for the sake of her people.

It is why she dismisses her ladies, Lady Myrcella among them, only two days after Sam's arrival, so as to be alone with the maester. They have been working at their embroidery and talking about nothing for hours before a fire that does not blaze too hot—one of the economies Sansa implemented upon Jon's departure. Sansa does not feel the cold, but the other ladies kept pulling their furs tighter about their shoulders as the day went on. They are all right after a fashion, but she still can't be entirely herself with them, and with Jon gone, she feels as if she might lose what it means to be real.

"Maester Samwell?"

"Yes, Your Grace?" he stumbles on the words, while shifting his weight back and forth over his feet.

"Any ravens? Any messages yet today?"

From Jon is what she wants to know. The army is not so far, only a few days' ride. There has been one raven sent to them to report that the Kingsroad is becoming impassable for wagons to the north of King's Landing.

"None yet, Your Grace."

"Ah," Sansa sighs. She knows there will be fewer and fewer such messages, as the distance grows greater, but she felt not so disconnected from her husband, when she heard a report of what it is he's seeing and doing.

She looks up to see that Sam's face is tight with tension. "You look as if I'm going to scold you."

Sam's mouth twitches and he stares down at the ground. "I should have come to see you again sooner, but I'm still trying to sort things out, Your Grace. Reading over the accounts, well, they're in very bad shape."

"I'm sure they are. This castle has seen three kings in short space. It will be no failing of yours if it takes moons to straighten things out. I don't mean to rush you. But that's not why I asked you to come speak with me."

His eyes go wide, as if he expects something even worse than her displeasure over his slowness.

Sansa rushes to assuage his nerves, waving her hands before her, "It's nothing bad, I assure you. I only wanted the chance to speak with you alone for a moment. Jon is so certain we should be friends. I thought we might begin."

Sam colors at the suggestion and mumbles something she can't make out.

"Forgive me, but may I call you Sam?"

He blinks back at her. "Why, why, yes, Your Grace, if you like." He shrugs, laughing. "I've gone by much worse."

Sansa smiles. "I have no plans to call you anything outrageous, but if you prefer to be called Maester Samwell, I'll understand. It's a great deal of work, learning your trade at the Citadel, I have been told. You've worked hard for your title and position. I don't mean to diminish the honor due you by asking if I might be on more familiar terms."

She watches him try and fail to form a response.

"Sit, Sam," she urges, gesturing towards one of the carved walnut chairs vacated by her ladies.

He sits, fitting rather more snugly than the previous occupant, and rests his hands over his belly. She is relieved to see that once he does not have to stand awkwardly before her, he looks somewhat more at ease.

"I'd be happy to hear you call me Sam, Your Grace. Sometimes I look over my shoulder when I'm addressed as _maester_. To be honest, I'm not sure I'll ever be entirely used to it."

"I feel the same way about being called _Your Grace_. So, please do me the favor of calling me Sansa in return. With Jon gone, I fear I never hear my own name. It makes one feel rather lonesome."

"Oh, no. Forgive, I'm sorry, but… No, that wouldn't be appropriate. I wouldn't feel…"

"It would only be when we're alone," she says reaching out to lay her hand over his. "Maybe you'll come around to it. When we're friends."

It is a touch silly, what she intends on asking Sam, but then, perhaps there is still something left of the silly girl that she thought had breathed her last breath when Petyr drew _his_ last breath, snuffed out forever in an act premeditated with the greatest care.

"That's why I called for you. I suppose it sounds rather ridiculous, a woman grown asking someone to be her friend, but I'd like it if we came to be friends. I'd like it very much."

Sam's brows inch up his face, making him look comically stunned. "I never had a friend before Jon."

"Well, Jon says you're not just friends. You're brothers. It might be awkward for me to admit it, but Jon's a rather good brother to have, isn't he?"

Sam's face flushes red. "Yes, Your Grace."

"I didn't quite recognize it at the time. Until it was too late. You were no doubt a much better brother to him than I was ever a sister." Sansa smoothes her navy woolen skirts out. "You see, if we are to be friends, I must be honest about my failings."

Sam wraps his hands more closely around himself. "If we are to recount our failings as a road to intimacy, my list will ensure we become very good friends."

Sansa laughs. "It needn't be the only way. Jon said you were fond of music and songs?"

"Yes, and books."

Sansa arches one brow and purses her lips. "I'm not the greatest reader, but we might invite someone to sing for us now and then. Our stores are no longer the finest, but surely singers need to eat as much as the rest of us will with winter underway. And after we've had our fill of song, you might remedy my lack of reading and recommend some books to me. We have an impressive library here. Have you had a chance to look at it?"

Sam nods, looking a little sheepish. "Late at night, I admit I took some time away from my work. I thought I might find something useful. Or something interesting at least."

Sansa brushes away his evident concern with a flick of the wrist. "Do as you like on your own time. You and I are both servants of the realm, but we are both human too. We need our distractions. When Jon left, he promised me that we wouldn't even think to miss him, because you and I would be such good friends. I could use a touch of that forgetfulness."

Sam looks back at her, his pale eyes suddenly soft in his moon shaped face. "I don't think I can help you forget, Your Grace."

Sansa draws back into her tall backed chair, swallowing, "No, I dare say you can't."

How can one forget, when the better part of oneself is gone?

"But we can miss him together."

Sansa exhales, a soft smile, a real one, tugging at the corners of her mouth, despite her melancholy. "That might be all I need. Someone I can miss him and remember him with. Well, that and some good advice. I have this impossible task ahead of me and I will quite rely on you to assist me in it."

"I'm at your service."

"Jon assures me you're the brightest man in the Seven Kingdoms."

Sam blushes and shifts in his chair. "Hardly, Your Grace."

"I suspect he might be right, but even if Jon exaggerated some, he did so out of affection. I should know: he overestimates my abilities as well. It is why he has left me to sit the weirwood throne in his absence—over confidence in my abilities."

"From what I've seen so far, Your Grace, from what I have heard said of you, there could be no one better to fill Jon's seat while he is gone. I would wager you're more than up to the task."

…

Sam and Jon might be right, Sansa might be up to the task of sitting the throne while Jon is gone fighting the Others, but there is one task Sansa is not up to, and that is stemming her tears on one morning, two weeks after Jon's departure. She wakes in the early morning hours with the sun casting a shadow across her four poster bed to a dull pain in her lower back and rolls onto her side, only to feel sticky wetness between her thighs. Scrambling to sit up, she pulls at her shift and clenches her eyes shut tight, when she sees a dark stain. Her eyes dart over the linens and sees a spot there as well. Her moon's blood has come.

She had hoped…

She had thought…

She had prayed…

There will be no grey eyed babe with dark hair curling over his brow. There will be no child to teach to be brave and dutiful like his father. No child to sit in her lap and babble his alphabet. No chubby arms about her neck or sweet kisses to her cheek.

Jon promised she wouldn't be, but she is. She is alone. Alone forever if the gods are cruel.

She doesn't know how long she has been curled up atop the unbleached linens in her bloodied shift, when her serving girl, Dasha, enters the room to feed the fire and bring her some sweetened porridge to break her fast, but she finds she can't lift her heavy head to answer Dasha's worried, whispered questions. If she lies very still, she hopes the girl will leave and no one will have to look upon her in her current state.

Her behavior must terrify the girl, for she finally runs from the room with a patter of kid leather slippers on stone, and Sansa is left to turn her face into her pillow, so as to silence her tears. Time passes, but there is no end to her sadness, no end to the salted disappointment and failure she feels.

A soft, clammy hand pats her shoulder, where her shift has fallen away, and she curls tighter in on herself, hoping whoever it is will have the good grace to leave her alone with her sorrow, but they don't. Whoever it is is annoyingly persistent, until she is finally forced to shift just enough to utter her command. "Leave me."

"I will once I've checked on you, but Your Grace does not seem well. I've come to see what might be the cause of your…your…"

It is Sam's voice. Uncertain and nervous, shaking like a leaf in an early winter storm.

She should be humiliated, having a man, even the family's new maester, find her like this, but she feels nothing but the knife of sorrow lodged in her breast, causing a stab of pain with every breath she draws.

"Is it…is it your moon's blood giving you discomfort?" he manages to ask, though she can almost hear in his voice the fiery blush on his cheeks.

"Yes," Sansa says flatly. In a way it is, but it is so much more than usual nagging pain that makes her weep on this grey morn.

"I can mix you a draught," he suggests hopefully, but she reaches out a hand and closes it around his hairless wrist, holding him fast and preventing him from bustling away to carry out his task.

"Don't bother. It won't help me."

"It will help ease the pain. I've never actually had cause to administer it, but I am not so bad at making draughts."

"No," Sansa says, rolling over onto her back and covering her face with her free hand, still clutching Sam with the other. "It's a pain of another sort."

She sucks in a gasp, trying not to drown in the tears that run down the back of her throat.

He remains at her side, silently waiting for her to finish. His steady silence gives her a vague sort of confidence to speak aloud her grief.

"I had hoped I might be with child. I am not." To his credit he does not assure her of her youth, of the many chances that lie ahead of her to conceive. No, he listens. When she is certain he doesn't mean to leave her, she lets her grip on him slip. "I might not have another chance. Jon might never come back and the kingdom will have no heir and I will have nothing left of Jon."

"I believe he will come back," Sam says quietly, the waver gone from his speech.

"Do you?" she asks, pulling back her hand to look upon him through bloodshot eyes that burn. Without her hand there to stop them, her tears roll down her hot cheeks and drip onto her neck.

"Yes. Every time he should have died, he has not."

It is good to hear someone say something encouraging with winter worries on everyone's lips, so she does not voice her concern that perhaps this only means Jon's luck has long since been set to expire.

"Should he come home, I won't have a son to place in his arms."

"That's no fault of yours."

She balls the bed linens in her fist, trying to summon some anger, which might be easier to bear than this spirit consuming sadness. "Isn't it? My mother did better. She gave my father a son to return home from war to."

"He'll come home to you. That's all he wants."

I've asked for too much and the gods will give me no more. I have cheated Jon out of a son. "There's something wrong with me."

"I doubt that, Your Grace. How long were you married?" Sansa shakes her head and stares up at the paneled ceiling. "Not long, I know. Although, I could…I could examine you to put your mind at ease."

He sounds so uncertain that in a different mood, Sansa might laugh at the offer. "Another day then. I am…I am not well."

"I can see that, Your Grace. It is a sickness of the spirit," Sam observes. "Those are the worst kind."

She lets her eyes flutter closed. She has exhausted herself with her tears. "I have a great many fears, Sam, with this war and winter upon us, but other than losing Jon, I think disappointing him might be the biggest."

"Oh, I don't think you could possibly disappoint him. He spoke…he spoke very warmly of you in his messages to me."

"Ah," Sansa sighs. My warm hearted husband, who looks so stern that you would never guess how sweet and gentle he can be. "That's…he's good, my Jon."

"You know, he would be upset to see you like this. That is what he would find troubling, not any of the rest of it."

Upset to see her indulging herself—that isn't what Sam means, but as he says it, shame settles in her belly. It is one thing to mourn the loss of something she never had, while she is alone in her chambers at night, the way Sam might thumb through the tombs in the library after the Red Keep has gone to sleep, but it is another to spend the day in bed. These hysterics are the worst kind of waste. There are people who need her, and she accomplishes nothing with her tears. They have not made her feel better and they will never give her the child she wants.

She brushes at her knotted hair with shaking fingers, teasing out the tangles, while looking over Sam's shoulder towards the closed door of her chamber, behind which her people go about their duties despite their own fears. "I've embarrassed myself and acted out of weakness."

"We're allowed to feel weak sometimes."

She pulls at her shift, balling it up, so the stain might not show. He's already seen it, of course, but until she calls for Dasha to draw a bath for her, she does not care to look upon it herself. If she is going to recover someday from this cruel disappointment, she will have to stop fixating upon it. That must be the first step.

She attempts a smile, but feels her face twitch into a grimace instead. "If we are not friends now, Sam, I fear we never will be."

Sam hesitates. "I...I understand some. I have someone I miss as well, Sansa."

Her name, he has said her name. It is almost enough to make her truly smile.

Sansa presses the back of her hand under her nose, sniffing. "Who is it that you miss?"

"Her name is Gilly, after the gillyflower."

"That's a pretty name."

"_She's_ pretty too."

Once he says this much, Sam's lips are loosened and Sansa scoots back in the pillows, wrapping her arms around her legs as he tells her everything. Gilly has big brown doe eyes set in a narrow face. She's slender, and you'd never know she'd born a babe—not his, though he broke his vows with her. She was born north of the Wall. He rescued her and her babe from her father. Jon saw to it that she traveled with him to Oldtown, but then she was sent on to Horn Hill to stay with his family. They took her, because he lied and said the babe was his bastard. He has not seen her since, but he remembers her kindness. She's brave too.

"Brave like you," he finishes.

"I don't feel very brave today."

"I don't ever feel particularly brave, but I've still managed well enough. You'll do better than that. You'll do what's best for your subjects, and sometimes we can have a good cry," he offers with a nervous smile.

"Yes, that we shall," Sansa agrees.

He nods and looks as if he is going to leave her, so she clears her throat, speaking with more calm, as an idea seizes hold of her, helping to collapse her pain into a smaller compartment in her chest. "Would you like her to come here, Sam?"

He goes very still, when he repeats her name. "Gilly?"

"Yes. When was the last time you saw her?"

"A very long time ago," he replies softly.

She sees something in Sam's eyes that she has not seen there before. It is something she would not mind seeing more of.

"We could remedy that. You could send her a message. Ask if she might like to join you here in the Red Keep. She could have the babe with her too, of course."

His voice comes out rather high, when he asks, "Here in the castle?"

"There's no reason for you to be apart. I don't care about such things. I dare say Jon wouldn't either."

"What would…what would the rest of them say?" he asks, his eyes cutting towards the door.

"Nothing." It is a tone that does not allow for disagreement, but she will not press him. She will allow Sam to contemplate the idea of having his girl at his side once more. "You will let me know of your decision."

Sam shakes his head yes, and Sansa thinks she can hear his breath come more quickly, as if he is overcome by the prospect.

Good. They have agreed to miss Jon together, but if Sam is required to also miss Gilly, that seems an unnecessary cruelty that could be easily be dispensed with.

Sansa scoots across the bed until her feet dangle over the edge and she holds out her hand to him. "My dressing gown, please?"

He hurries over to the chair, shuffling to where Dasha laid out her dressing gown trimmed in soft, ivory curls of lamb fur before the girl was fully aware of her queen's distress, and when he brings it back to her, she murmurs her thanks.

She wraps it around her narrow shoulders and puts on her face for the day, summoning her inner strength, the strength that is her birthright. It works. She can feel her tears drying in itchy tracks without fresh to join them. There is still the pain, but turning her thoughts to another's happiness has helped to dull it.

She throws the furs over the bed, covering the spot that hides beneath, and glances towards the window, out of which she can see that fresh snow has fallen on the tiled rooftops of King's Landing. Jon's men might already be marching through heavy snow.

She tucks the dressing gown around her more tightly.

"Send for Dasha, Maester Samwell. I require a hot bath, one of your not so bad draughts, and then I think you and I should go over those accounts today. I am not entirely hopeless with numbers and two heads might just be better than one."

"Yes, Your Grace." He does not make it to the heavy door before he looks back at her, his fingers nervously tugging at his black, belted robe. "I would like it, having Gilly here. I don't need to think about it."

"Good. We'll send a raven today before the snow is too deep to travel and before we bury ourselves in those messy accounts."


	27. Chapter 27

**Summary**: The news stopped. First it slowed to a trickle and then nothing. Not even the mumbled reports of those who fled the terrors of the North reached them any longer

**Notes**: This is the penultimate chapter. Crazy! I will probably post a teaser on tumblr from the final chapter and some of you might be interested in my medieval history/asoiaf meta which I run on Mondays. Either way, follow me on tumblr at username justadram. I'm also currently posting chapters for a Jon/Sansa modern AU called A City of Fortune and Failure, which you can find under the list of my works.

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><p>Chapter Twenty-Seven<p>

There must always be torches at hand to light the bodies aflame of those who have fallen, so that they may not rise again with eyes that burn like bright blue stars. There must also always be torches at hand to dispatch the wights, drawn to the living, to their warm blood, who make the shaggy ponies shy and men tremble in their boots, even though the once living humans and beasts move slowly and clumsily in their reanimated form. Perhaps it is because when they attack, they do so with surprising strength, with some lingering sense, which makes their enthrallment all the worse, particularly when they continue to fight, heedless of missing limbs, heads, and guts. But they are not unstoppable: they burn. The bodies of the dead and the wights that were not saved from thralldom burn and burn well, casting the only light in this darkened world other than that from their campfires.

And there must always be frozen fire too. Call it that or dragonglass or obsidian, but if one means to kill an Other, one must have a dagger, an arrow tip, something made from the black, hard stone. There are plenty to kill. There are countless wights, but there are a frightening amount of Others as well. They do not die in flames, the way their thralls do. Sam was the first to kill one, sheathing an obsidian dagger in one's flesh, watching in terror as its bones and flesh melted away, leaving behind an icy puddle.

Dragonsteel will do the trick as well. Sam thought the old books might mean Valyrian steel, when they named it as a tool against the Others, and Jon's thoughts turned to Longclaw, forged in dragonflame and set with spells. He was dubious, unsure that ancient stories could be counted on in the throes of battle, but just as he has watched the Others dispatch his men, he has also seen them melt before him.

Before Longclaw, as it glowed hot with fire, cutting a flaming arc through the darkened sky. Like the prophecy told, men murmur in awe, when he stomps past them, his body heavy with furs and leather. They are uneasy with him. He is something less than human now. But they are bonded by a shared fear of the creatures that move without free will through the drifts of snow, driven relentlessly forward.

If the wights inspire fear in his men, the Others nearly make all of them, himself included, return to the South in the vain hope that the Others stop their advance on their own. It is only Jon's sense of duty and the men's loyalty to their prophesized king that keeps them fighting the tall, pale, blue eyed creatures. Old Nan spoke of them as if they were dead, creatures who hated all living things, but they are alive. Jon knows, for he has sent them to their deaths.

Accompanied by giant ice spiders, they ride bears, horses, mammoths, and direwolves not unlike those that Sansa embroidered on his cloak in the shimmering light of a candle. When they walk, they leave no mark. They are as quick as their wights are slow. They are clad in armor so reflective that it is difficult to see them coming. When they are upon you, their skill with a sword is unmatched and their swords are like ice, but stronger, strong enough to shatter regular steel, strong enough to cleave a man from stem to stern with seemingly little effort. At first they only faced them at night and slept during the day, curled into each other for warmth with their camps ringed with fire, but as the nights grew longer and the sun disappeared altogether, their attack became relentless.

There is no more light for them to scorn. Without relief, with their numbers fewer every dark dawn, Jon begins to feel hopeless.

Winterfell seems a dream. King's Landing a lifetime away. Sansa forever out of reach.

And then the sky fills with dragons. Not black of scale and fiery of breath like the dragons he faced upon the walls of King's Landing, but with breath as cold as the dragons boasted in Old Nan's tales—ice dragons.

…

At first there was news.

Jon sent missives. She read them, her finger hovering above the words that his hand inked, taking in the details of his war, reading between the lines for any word he might have for her alone. Ravens brought news on black wings every moon, sometimes less. It was not always news that buoyed the spirit, for the war was hard and the loss of life great, but it was news and as long as there was news, Sansa found space to hope.

And there were people around her she grew to count on. People she had affection for—Myrcella and Sam and Gilly—who helped lighten the load of ruling. Others still, whom she did not quite hold in affection, but whom she trusted, were instrumental in keeping the kingdom fed and ordered, such as Tyrion, the Lord of Casterly Rock.

But the news stopped. First it slowed to a trickle and then nothing. Not even the mumbled reports of those who fled the terrors of the North, those who spoke of a king who fought with a sword that glowed—sounding too much like prophecy fulfilled to be fully believed—and the beasts he faced reached them any longer, as the night grew so long that the sun no longer arose in the morning, leaving them in perpetual darkness. No one makes it to King's Landing from so far north anymore, and no one brings word of her husband.

And the food grows less and less. Until they are rationed to the point of discomfort and she can count her ribs in the privacy of her cold chambers that rarely are lit by fires now that fuel grows scarce.

She can bear the cold, bundled against it in wool and wrapped in furs. She is, after all, less susceptible to its icy grip than the Southroners. She can bear the hunger too. But to see these hardships stalk the faces of those around her, her friends, Jon's subjects, those whom he entrusted to her safekeeping, leaves her feeling increasingly hopeless. With no sun, with only ever deepening snow, and no word from the North, Sansa fears they will never see spring again, never see the king or his troops, and that all is lost. This winter will know no end. It will be the winter of all of their deaths.

As she withers under a veil of despair, she dwells increasingly on what she's lost—her parents, her brothers and sister, her husband—and she keeps to her rooms, saving her strength for moments when it is necessary to show herself, wrapped in furs so that others will not suspect she grows dangerously thin like a reed in the marshes.

And then Sam, slimmed by necessity to the point where his face is no longer rounded like the cheerful man in the moon, comes to her with a request from a stranger for an audience with the queen.

"What is his name?"

"Ser Gendry, knight of the Hollow Hill. Or so he says. I wouldn't have brought it to your attention, but he was most insistent."

"There are no private audiences with the queen," Myrcella, the only other person who sits with Sansa this icy morn, supplies, drawing her thinning blonde hair over the scarred side of her face with a shaking hand.

There is no fire lit, for Sansa will not abide one in her chamber unless the night is cold enough to kill her, but Myrcella's once tanned skin looks a shade of pale blue and she considers calling for Dasha, so that firewood might be brought, for her friend's sake.

"You're right, my lady. I will tell him to come back in two days for the next public audience," Sam says, bowing slightly, as he begins to move backwards from the room, shuffling over the stones.

"Wait," Sansa says, holding up her hand, a gesture that takes no small effort considering the layers of furs draped over her lap into which she tucked herself. "Why did he want a _private_ audience?"

It is an unusual request. One most people would not think to make of the queen.

Sam's mouth twists, his hands scrabble, looking for somewhere to hide, and he mumbles a few incomprehensible words.

"Is it as bad as all that?" Sansa asks, standing with a sigh, clutching the furs to her, so they do not puddle on the floor that is covered by rushes that are less than fresh. "Perhaps I should come down to meet this Ser Gendry if he has you so discomposed." Not that it is entirely unheard of for Maester Sam to be rattled, but his confidence grew in the passing moons, as he learned his post and their friendship blossomed; she has not seen him appear quite so awkward in her presence in some time.

"No, Your Grace. Please," he begs, holding up a hand to stop her.

"Now what is this? You brought it to my attention. Why should I not meet with him?"

He lowers his voice, leaning towards her. "I'm afraid of what he means to tell you, Your Grace."

"About the war? About Jon?"

Sansa feels her heart stop for one painful moment of suspense. Wouldn't she have felt it? If he died? Would she go on living, unaware that her husband had departed this world?

"No, Your Grace." Sam shakes his head, his hair, grown too long, flopping with the motion. It must be suggested to Gilly that he is in need of a trim. There is no reason for them to all look like shaggy mountain ponies just because the Stranger comes to claim them all. "He says…he says he knows something of your sister."

Blood rushes to her head and she sways on her feet. Myrcella stands to grab her, as if her hunger weakened limbs can do much to support Sansa, should she begin to fall. With her remaining strength, Sansa reaches out a hand, clamping it down on Myrcella's shoulder to keep her feet under her. Even through the fur wrapped about her, Sansa can feel the young woman's sharp bones.

Sam, moving more quickly than might once have done, springs forward to grip her other arm, and balanced by the pair of them, she lifts her head to croak, "Arya?"

"Yes, Your Grace. So he says."

Arya. Her sister. Little long faced Arya, who would rather follow Jon Snow about the training yard than sit at her sister's side and embroider a screen. Her family.

"A draught? Something reviving? Have you eaten, Your Grace?"

She hears Sam's words as if from far away. They hold no interest.

"Move, move!" she says, forgetting decorum, forgetting courtesy as she shoves past Sam, dropping her furs and moving with more purpose than she has in nearly two moons in her sudden desperation to escape the confines of this chamber and find this knight, who claims to know something of her sister.

"Where is he waiting?" she demands, spinning back to Sam, who looks at her with eyes gone wide and his mouth slack.

"Your Grace, he might…he might very well be a liar."

"Yes, of course he might. He most likely is, but where is he?"

It takes no small amount of convincing on Sam's part to persuade the queen that Ser Gendry must be disarmed if he means to have a private audience with the queen and that it would not do for her to meet him in the frozen yard, where he currently waits, in order to quiz him about the whereabouts of her sister.

Instead, she waits in the echoing, frigid chamber where the king's council meets. It is a long table to sit at alone, but she chose this solitude, having sent Myrcella away, though the young lady understands what it is to have lost one's family and offered with eyes that shimmered with tears to keep her company, while Ser Gendry was brought to meet with the queen. This is something she must do alone.

The clang of armor announces the approach of the guards—elderly, infirm, or otherwise disabled guards, who have been left behind by the army to keep them all 'safe'—who have been entrusted with escorting a disarmed, unknown knight into the queen's presence, so that he might share news relating to her sister.

_Arya_.

Sansa grips the edge of the wooden table, feeling as if she might sink through the floor, when they turn the corner and she sees the knight approach, flanked on either side by guards. All three men are poorly armored, but Ser Gendry's armor is heavily rusted, no doubt from the snow that falls without pause, as well as ill-fitting and mismatched. Despite his tangled, black hair that falls to his shoulders, sad armor, and face smudged with dirt or soot, she thinks him not entirely unimpressive. He is tall and looks relatively strong, as if a few good meals would return him to prime fighting condition. He is too young—no older than Jon, surely—and too healthy to be here, when he could be fighting in the North. She is tempted to tell him so, but then, he would not be within these walls, prepared to deliver word of her sister, so she buries her reproaches.

She thinks him oddly familiar too, as he draws close and she stands to receive his greeting, pulling Jon's white fur closer about her shoulders with a lift of her chin.

The hoary guard on the left pronounces his name and when the rusty armored knight doesn't move immediately to go to his knee, the guard on the right, who is missing an arm, but otherwise brawnier than his elderly compatriot, pushes on the knight's shoulder, forcing him down.

Sansa steps forward, ready to say that such force is not necessary, when he looks up at her through a thick, dirty hank of hair, mumbling, "Your Grace."

His eyes are strikingly blue.

_Gods_, but he looks like Renly Baratheon, the king's youngest brother. While she knew him only briefly, the resemblance is so strong that it is as if he is a ghost brought before her feet to kneel. Words catch in her throat, as he stares steadily up at her, looking very much as if he is tracing her features as much as she traces his with darting eyes.

"Ser Gendry," she finally manages, gesturing with her open palm for him to rise.

He does so rather smoothly, standing once more with his hands folded before him. He is in need of a meal like the rest of them and a good warm bath might improve his appearance, but he appears otherwise unravaged by the winter gales. Alive as he is, he is at least in better shape than Renly was, when they found him dead in his tent at the beginning of these wars.

She turns to the guard on the right, asks that the food and drink she requested be brought in and commands them to wait outside.

"Have a seat, ser," she says, offering him the empty chair to her left.

Jon would wait for her to take her seat, but Gendry, lacking even the most basic courtesy, shambles towards the offered chair and does not look up to see whether she has seated herself before collapsing in it with a weary huff and a clatter of armor. How does one who looks so much like a Baratheon come to King's Landing as a knight and yet know nothing of courtesy? Even King Robert _knew_ how to act, Sansa imagines, though he chose to act contrary to that code of conduct.

She knows better than to expect heroics of a man just because he bears the title _ser_, but to be completely without courtly graces presumably means this knight owes no allegiance to a lord, has not served in a house, and has no master. Being a hedge knight would explain the state of his armor. Some hedge knights use their skills for banditry and lawlessness—more so now than ever, no doubt, as the law becomes more difficult to uphold as the snows grow deeper—but there are others, she has heard, who are more honorable than their social betters. She hopes he is of the latter kind if he truly knew her sister: it would bode better for Arya's fate.

She sees out of the corner of her eye a wisp of a serving girl with dirty blond hair tucked into a lumpy cap hovering, and waves her forward. Clutched in one chapped hand is a mug of ale in and the other a steaming bowl of gruel, which will be cold much too quickly in this drafty hall, so Sansa motions for him to eat as soon as it is set before him, while dismissing the girl with a nod. He hesitates for a second, his hand hovering over the wooden spoon, his eyes darting from her to the bowl.

He is not completely without courtesy then. Or kindness, at least, for surely her hollowed cheeks reveal how little even the queen eats.

"Don't be bothered on my account. I have already eaten, ser."

He waits for no other encouragement. Ducking his head and hunching his shoulders, he sets to scooping heaping spoonfuls of gruel into his mouth, making eager, slurping noises with which she can commiserate though they are uncouth. It was a lie: she has not eaten yet today. Rarely taking more than one meager meal a day, she will attempt to wait until supper to dine, so she might go to bed without hunger clawing at her belly. It will be a temptation when she does eat, not to force it down with similar unbridled enthusiasm.

The spoon scrapes the bottom of the bowl with alarming speed. Under different circumstances Sansa would as a good hostess call for more, but that is a luxury they cannot afford. So she allows him to finish and watches him lift the mug to his lips and drain nearly half of it in a series of thick swallows.

"Thank you," he grumbles, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, as the mug comes to rest on the table with a thump.

There is color in his cheeks from the food and the ale, and when he swats his hair away from his face, she can better imagine him clean-shaven. It is how Renly always appeared.

Perhaps he is a bastard. Renly was unmarried until Margaery, but that does not mean he was without heirs. Which would make this knight the lone claimant to the Baratheon line, should the Martells be made to understand that Myrcella is no more Baratheon than Gilly is.

"You don't look much like her," he says, interrupting her precarious line of thought. "Your sister. Arya, Lady Arya."

Sorely tempted to agree and give too much away, she wets her lips and tilts her head, giving herself time to compose a less revealing response. "You have seen my sister?"

"Yes," he says, pushing away the empty bowl. "Though not for some years."

"Years?"

"Four years, I mark it, Your Grace, though I couldn't say for certain."

Frustration and disappointment war inside of her, twisting her belly. What good to her is information that is four years old? Four years ago, she was still only a girl, barely wed, but unbedded. That was a lifetime ago.

"What makes you think this girl you knew so long ago was my sister?"

"She went by Arry and then Nan, but she was your sister. Told me a bit about her family, once I found out she was a lady and egged her into confessing it." He narrows his eyes at her until the dark lashes nearly conceal the blue of them. "You're more of a lady than she was. You don't look like her much either."

Like night and day, and yet, not so different after all, Sansa would like to believe.

"You think there were such great differences?" Sansa asks, her voice sounding thin.

One half of his mouth pulls up in a smile. "Yes. But then, for all I know, you're just as scrappy, for all your fine clothes." He hasn't Renly Baratheon's obsession with appearances if he thinks her simple woolen gown and hose and laced leather slippers are anything of note. Only her fur, Jon's wedding gift, is worth a second look. "She had dark hair, cropped close, since she was traveling as a boy, and grey eyes."

A boy. That would be safer. Arya might even like pretending to be a boy for a time.

"And where did you meet?"

"On the road. We were both headed for the Wall with Yoren of the Night's Watch. I suppose he meant to reunite her with her brother. Your brother."

"My husband, the king," Sansa corrects.

He picks up the mug and finishes the remainder with a gasp. His cheeks look hot, when he mumbles over the empty mug, "Your husband."

Some people will never believe Jon is not her brother, but ruling as a Targaryen, it should make no difference if Jon did choose the woman raised as his sister to be queen. Except to the smallfolk, who think such things depraved.

Sansa straightens her shoulders, pining them stiffly against the back of her chair. "Then you mustn't have gotten there, because I wager Jon would have mentioned seeing Arya again."

"We didn't, no," he says, slipping the mug across the table to set beside the empty bowl. "We were attacked long before that on the road and taken captive. Ended up in Harrenhal for a time."

_Harrenhal_. Sansa's pulse quickens. Harrenhal was Petyr's castle, though he never stepped foot in it. Harrenhal is what raised him high enough to wed her aunt, only to sacrifice her to the Moon Door. Was it his by then, given to him as a reward by Joffrey? What part did he play in her sister's fate there? Did he know she lived there as Arry or Nan?

"Tell me everything. Please. At once."

He does. He tells his story. Arya's story. It is not easy to hear the exploits Ser Gendry recounts, just as she imagines it would be difficult for Arya to listen impotently to the dangers Sansa faced while subject to the Lannisters, but she is transfixed all the same. As it unfolds, she feels as if a bit of her sister's history, which Sansa imagined lost to her forever, has been recovered. She was wary that Ser Gendry might be a liar, might be seeking some kind of reward or advancement through the spinning of tales meant to win the queen's favor, but the details are too specific, too close to what she remembers of her sister to be the result of falsehoods and trickery. And although when he comes to his knighting by Lord Beric Dondarrion, the point at which he was parted from her sister, she is unreasonably angry with him for not staying with Arya, she likes him in spite of it, for having been a friend to her little sister once upon a time.

"When I heard her sister was queen and her brother king, I thought to come, but…" Gendry shifts in his chair, his boots scuffing the floor as he stares at the table.

"You're here now," Sansa offers, for he has given her back something of her sister and she's willing to forgive the delay. Whatever happened to Arya four years ago, the moons that have passed since Jon's coronation have made the trail no colder. "And I thank you for coming. What you've told us might prove to be useful. It is my husband's intention to find Arya and my other siblings as well, when the war is over."

Ser Gendry's appearance here and his tale has reminded her of Jon's promise and made it feel more real than it has in moons, since they spoke of Bran's voice at their wedding whispering through the weirwood trees. The hope that Jon's victory might also eventually result in the return of her sister or Bran or Rickon fills Sansa with hope. Flushed with a renewed will to push persevere, despite the hunger and death that shadows their land, excitement and fear of disappointment bubbles up in her belly, making her lean forward to rest her hand over Gendry's, where it grasps the armrest of his chair.

"Thank you, ser," she repeats. "What might I do for in you return for this most welcome information?" She feared recompense drove him, but now she can't in good conscience let him leave without rewarding him in some way.

"Nothing, Your Grace."

"Nonsense, there must be something. Who is it that is your master?" she asks, while suspecting he will not have an answer.

"I was a member of a band; they were outlaws under the Lannister reign." He shifts again, his eyes once more boring holes into the ancient table. "The Brotherhood Without Banners."

Sansa sits back, blinking. It is a group of outlaws with which she is familiar. Jaime killed a number of them before coming to the Vale for her, seeking to fulfill the vow he made her mother. It was her lady mother who led the group of outlaws. She was in the grip of a living death, as well as the grip of madness, from what Jaime told her.

She folds her hands in her lap. Jaime was the last person she knew to see Lady Stoneheart, the creature that was once her mother. Until Ser Gendry. This knight has a trick of running across Starks. "Then you have served a Stark before."

Having cleared his throat, he agrees. "Although, she was not what she once was, I gather."

"No, I think she wasn't."

Sansa wishes there was more ale left in his mug. If there was, she wouldn't think twice about taking it from him and finishing it off in the hopes that it might slow her ragged heartbeat.

"Would you care to serve a Stark again?" It might be the most fitting solution to an appropriate reward for Ser Gendry, a former follower of her mother's.

He casts a sidelong glance at her. "In service as a knight?"

"You're liable to be better fed and kept here with me than you are in the hedgerows and we are rather short on knights or men at arms of any kind at the moment, since most went north with King Jon."

"That's very generous, Your Grace," he says, though there is a leery edge to his voice that makes Sansa suspect he's not entirely sure of her offer.

"War might suit you better, as a chance to test your mettle. I'd send you after them, although you're liable to have some difficulty finding them, unless reports travel in the North better than they do here nowadays."

"I'd rather not. The snow doesn't suit me."

"No, of course it doesn't. You're not from the North are you? King's Landing, perhaps?" If he is to stay, Sansa must know whether her suspicions about his birth are remotely possible. Whether she is inviting potential rebellion into the heart of the kingdom.

He nods. "Yes. It's why I stayed away. Owing to whom I seem to remind folks of."

Renly Baratheon. She isn't the first then to note the similarities.

Best to put it to him plainly: "Who are you, Ser Gendry?"

He scratches at his beard. "I don't rightly know. My mother was just a tavern wench. I'm lowborn, somebody's bastard." Jon is somebody's bastard too. That disadvantage presently means very little, seeing as he is king. "Only, I've been told I resemble the king. The king that was, rather, Robert. Or his brother."

It is only her preexisting suspicions, preparing her for such a likelihood, which allow Sansa to keep her countenance, when she asks, "What do you make of such claims?"

Ser Gendry's hand slips over his mouth, muffling his response. "Sounds like nonsense to me."

She could lie, confirm that it is nonsense by telling him she sees no resemblance, she who knew both the king and his brother, but others have already spoken the truth and he could easily find someone left in King's Landing, who would confirm it for him again. Besides, it might test him better to affirm it rather than deny.

"Well, you do look like Renly, Robert's brother: black of hair, blue eyes, broad. Although that might mean nothing at all, for he was not known to have fathered any bastards. Whereas you could easily be one of Robert's bastards. There were enough of them."

"I wouldn't know."

"I suppose all that matters is whether you believe it to be true and what you'd mean to do about it if it was."

He tips his head down. "Stay out of the way, as I've done since the Brotherhood went to pieces. I'd rather not be killed for whoever might possibly have sired me. I only risked coming here, thinking you might not string me up on account of your sister."

That was a dangerous gamble. "Westeros can't afford another war, Ser Gendry." Even if Gendry has no desire to claim the throne, some other halfwit might take it into their head to raise him up. It might be better for everyone if he was dead.

Sansa wonders for a moment what Arya might do with him, her former friend, if she were here and knew him to be a potential threat to Jon's throne. As close as she might have been to Ser Gendry, after all they endured together, Jon was still the brother she loved best of all. In light of that, would she do the stringing up for Sansa? Or forgive him his birth and take a chance that it would never become an issue?

He twitches slightly under her stare, his hands fidgeting. "I'm just a smith, knighted by an outlaw. I'm no pretender to the throne. I can be on my way and you needn't hear of me again."

He doesn't plead—she wouldn't expect one of her mother's men to plead—but his tone is soft and she finds herself wanting to believe him. She would rather not repay his kindness in coming here so brutally.

"Leave, when I've offered you a place here, serving me?"

"I understand the honor of the offer, Your Grace, but I'd feel wrong accepting it."

"Worried I might take your head on a whim?" It is what Lady Stoneheart was known for, after all, and he might fear that she is not so different from her undead lady mother.

His chest swells, making him looks as broad as a barrel. "They say your husband is honorable."

"He is." Like their father before him.

"I wouldn't want my presence to cause problems for Arya's family. All she wanted was to be back with them."

Sansa bites the inside of her cheek.

This boy was a brother to her sister, when all other family was lost to her, and he endangered his own life to bring word of her to her family. Arya might hate Sansa all over again, should she return to King's Landing after the war only to discover that Sansa had Ser Gendry executed on suspicion of being a Baratheon bastard.

Sansa might hate herself too. This ragged knight is her closest link to her little sister. The closest thing Sansa has left of her are his stories and those would die with him.

She stands and with some sense of what is called for Ser Gendry scrambles to stand as well, as she extends her hand to be kissed. "That's all any of us wanted, Ser Gendry. I appreciate your scruples, but I hope very much that you will be here to help welcome her back into the bosom of her family."

Yesterday she wouldn't have thought it possible. But Ser Gendry has reminded her that even on the darkest morn, there is light. Arya might be restored to her. Her husband as well. Her brothers. Winter might end in a spring that melts all snow and ice. The kingdoms might prosper in harmony.

As long as she still draws breath, anything is possible.


	28. Chapter 28

**Chapter Summary**: The manner in which Sansa and the rest of the Red Keep come out to meet their king and his men as they straggle back to King's Landing lacks pageantry, decorum, and any kind of organization, but Sansa gives none of that a second thought.

**Chapter Rating**: M for sexual content

**Author's Notes**: This is to date the longest fanfic I've ever written—the next comes in a good 30,000 words shorter. I've also never taken so long to finish a fic. When I started this, I was not yet finished with my PhD, so some of you have read and reviewed through the final stages of writing my dissertation and my dissertation defense on my way to becoming Dr. Dram. I'm pretty sure that makes us family. Thank you for all your support and kind words. I am sorry if I killed your favorites along the way. I killed some of mine too.

Every time someone told me I converted them to the Jon/Sansa ship (or the Jaime/Sansa ship!) it warmed my heart and an angel got their wings. When I opened this doc to begin this final chapter, I got a little queasy: I'm attached to these characters and this version of Jon and Sansa's story, and letting go of them is difficult. It's not all sewn up at the end. Not everything is perfect, because I don't think ASOIAF is going to be a tidy, happy ending. Regardless, I'm might revisit this universe in oneshots.

When I look at the follows, favs, kudos, and comments this fic has received, I'm completely bowled over. If you are left bereft, I am currently writing a modern AU, _A City of Fortune and Failure_, which is Jon/Sansa. I'm also plotting a Jon/Sansa, Canadian Mountie AU, which I'll probably begin posting sometime in September or thereabouts. Finally, follow my fangirling on tumblr (username justadram)—we should be friends!

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><p>Chapter Twenty-Eight<p>

There is nothing dignified about it. The manner in which Sansa and the rest of the Red Keep come out to meet their king and his men as they straggle back to King's Landing lacks pageantry, decorum, and any kind of organization, but Sansa gives none of that a second thought. All she can think on is Jon, fixing her mind on the memory of his face and how his arms will encircle her, lifting her off the ground, when she finds him. How his lips will taste. How she will finally be able to breathe again knowing he is returned to her.

Both the returning army and those that come out to meet them lack horses to ride, for they were all slaughtered for meat moons ago, when there was nothing left to feed them, and hunger has made everyone weak and slow. Nevertheless, at the first horn blow from the city walls, announcing the sighting of the advancing army, and the answering incessant peel of the Great Sept's bells, spreading the word throughout King's Landing, everyone in the city seemed to shake off their lethargy. The throng of people sweeping through the streets and the Dragon Gate are driven forward by a burst of speed springing from elation and disbelief. Boney women, crooked old men, and scrawny children alike tumble forward. The women move the fastest with their skirts raised up around their ankles, running to see if their men have made it back alive, and Sansa is amongst them. With her heart in her throat and her fingers crushing the heavy wool of her skirts, she rushes forward, filled with a mix of anticipation and fear, though she knows with certainty that Jon is alive.

There were no ravens left to send word, but the frenzied talk of smallfolk overcame the deepest drifts of snow once Jon's army was on the move south, once the Others were defeated and their king victorious, bringing word of the slow—agonizingly slow—march back to King's Landing. It seems forever since the first whispers reached them. If there had been a horse to ride, Sansa thinks she might have abandoned her duty to her people and met him halfway, but she has been forced by circumstance to do as she ought and wait with feigned patience to see him.

Jon is alive and with every stride she takes, she is closer to being in his arms—warm, alive, whole—with his mouth hot against her skin, his hands pressing hard against her spine, whispering words meant only for her. It wasn't so long ago that she had given up hope of it ever being so.

As she reaches the first amorphous line of men and the crowd closes in around her, she searches, looking for dark curls and that smile that she thinks of as her own. The smell of them is almost overwhelming; a mix of sweat, mud, blood, infection, and fetid death that hangs heavy and clogs the sinuses, but it is their haggard appearance that chokes her. Things have been bad everywhere in the Seven Kingdoms, but all of these men look like the worst of what she has seen come before her in the throne room on audience day. Will her Jon be much altered?

Even if he is, she'll know him immediately as the lost piece of herself, but all around her she sees unfamiliar faces, looking past her to seek out someone else. A few stop and stumble back, attempting to give way to her, the lady they recognized as their queen, with a mumbled, _Your Grace_. But where is their king?

Her sanity frays at the edges, as she feels hysteria begin to grip her in the face of this final delay. Grasping the shoulder of a man with a patchy, overgrown beard, who is trying to dance out of her way, she demands, "Where is the king?"

The man turns, his rheumy eyes searching to the left. It isn't much, but it is a direction to fix upon, so she pushes forward once more. Though she can no longer run in this crush of humanity, her chest heaves as if from exertion, as she cranes her head from side to side and shoulders her way through the men and those who have come to meet them.

"Jon!" she calls out. It's desperate and ridiculous, thinking he might hear her and find her instead, since she is failing in her search for him, but she shouts his name thrice until she feels a hand grasp her elbow.

She spins to find Myrcella, her scar pulled by the spread of her bright smile, reminding Sansa as always of the young woman's father—one ghost of many—and the smiles he would flash her, when they were alone in her chambers in the Vale. Trystane stands behind his lady wife, his hands on her shoulders, tanned fingers overlaying the golden strands of hair that spread over a heavy fur given to her by Sansa upon the Martells' arrival in King's Landing, so she would not freeze. Myrcella's husband no longer looks boyish. He is worn and tattered with spidery lines at the corners of his eyes and a thick beard. He is a man grown.

"The king is over there, Your Grace. Just beside that wagon. Trystane just left his side," Myrcella says, pointing with an eager nod.

Sansa follows Myrcella's line of sight, squinting against the glaring light from the milky sky. It's true. The men part more readily than they did for her, as he comes through the crowd. He is Westeros' king, but he is more than that to his men. He is more to her. It is Jon.

He is a shaggy mess. With his hair too long and matted, a fearsomely unkempt beard obscuring half of his face, dark circles under his eyes, his furs dragging through the snow, and his boots wrapped in rags, he resembles nothing so much as a rather intimidating beggar.

He is perfect.

She means to say his name again, but nothing escapes the tightness in her throat, as he stops before her and lifts one black, gloved hand to her cheek. They have met like this before after being separated for so long. She knew then that she never wanted to be parted from him, for he looked and reminded her so much of home, so greatly of the family she feared lost to her that she wanted to hold him to her heart. Surely this time he is safe and truly hers to keep. That is her only prayer.

Her eyes flutter closed at the slight pressure of his hand against her face, the shocking warmth of his palm managing to seep through even the thick leather of his glove. It's only when she opens them again that it strikes her how vacant his eyes look. It's more than just a strange detachedness. He still has not wrapped his arms about her and he is completely silent. This is not what she envisioned.

Perhaps he means to maintain the dignity of his station. If he means to be controlled, she must do her best as his queen not to betray her own tumult of emotions. She'll suppress the urge to throw herself at him and drag him to his knees here in the snow, where they can kiss and kiss and kiss. There will be time for that later.

His hand drops to his side, balled into a fist, but she can't bear the thought of not touching him, so she snatches at his hand and works at his fingers until she can thread hers through his and squeeze tight. Although he makes no move to free himself, it does not escape Sansa's notice that he also does not squeeze back.

But he's here. That is all that matters, she reassures herself. Beyond all reason, he has survived.

"Thank the gods."

She repeats herself twice before Jon's gaze veers from her. It is Sam, who's caught his eye. Breathing heavily, he approaches with Gilly at his side, the two of them wrapped in scruffy, grey furs. Holding onto Gilly's heavily mittened hand is her child. The boy stares up at Jon with rounded brown eyes and a pale mouth that hangs open, as if he stands before the Warrior himself. It's no wonder: he's been raised on stories of Jon and Sam and the Night's Watch. They're all gods to him.

"Jon…Your Grace. It's so good, so good to see you…" Sam stutters. "Look who I've brought to welcome you. It's Gilly and the baby—not a baby anymore. His name is Sam," he finishes, beaming as he pats the boy's head.

Gilly considered Aemon in honor of the maester of the Night's Watch, she once told Sansa, but when she came to Horn Hill and everyone seemed so shocked to think Sam might be the father, she named him Sam instead, to honor a different maester to be. Sam seems about as proud to tell Jon the boy's name as he was when first he heard it from the lad himself upon Gilly's arrival at the Red Keep, but whatever reaction he was expecting from Jon, he doesn't get it. Neither of them has gotten the reception they imagined. Still Jon says nothing, and that can't be right, when Jon spoke so warmly of Sam and called him his brother. Jon must know, he must understand what this means to Sam.

Jon reaches out a hand to clap Sam on the shoulder, but utters not one hearty congratulation. Nothing.

Something is terribly off. Jon does not speak and she can't hear him inside her head, the way she could before he left. It makes Sansa want to throw open his furs and trace his body with shaking hands, seeking some evidence of a wound, or demand that Sam examine him for signs of illness, for something is very, very wrong. She should hear him, whispering to her heart, his pulse beating alongside hers, but there is nothing. It is as if there is a wall separating them, through which she can hear nothing.

Sam must sense it too, for his smile falters and he looks from Sansa to Jon, his brows drawing together in confusion.

Would it have made a difference if instead of Sam's family coming out to greet him, Sansa was able to present Jon with a family? A hearty boy of his own or a dark haired little girl, clutching at her skirts? There were times when hunger and inescapable fatigue made her glad that Jon's seed hadn't quickened, but would Jon still be so distant if her body hadn't failed them?

"The king's men are weary," Sansa announces, as she releases her grip on Jon to address Sam with as much false composure as she can muster, hands clasped demurely before her and chin held slightly aloft. "They must have blankets and baths and bread. Whatever might bring them some comfort after their long march. See to it."

"Yes, Your Grace."

"I'll help."

She almost doesn't recognize it as his voice. Her husband speaks with so raspy a voice that Sansa wonders when the last time he uttered a word was. She's certain she looks like an owl, as she takes him in and waits to see if he will now deign to speak to her as well.

He does not.

"Thank you, Your Grace," Sam belatedly replies, sounding rather unsure whether he should accept the help Jon offers or whether it is even possible to refuse Jon now that he is king.

Anyone can see that Jon is in no shape to help anyone. Someone should be helping him.

"That isn't necessary. We have already made the provisions. Sam knows what to do," Sansa tries, for she means to get Jon alone, where she might better gauge what is wrong, and if he goes off to help Sam there is no telling how long he will be consumed with his duty.

He stiffly shakes his head, cutting off her protestations. "I'm right behind you," he assures Sam, and Sam must see that there is to be no further discussion, for he does what Sansa can't quite manage: he turns and walks away with Gilly and the boy at his side, a frown still pulling at his mouth and creasing his once rounded face.

Jon makes to move past her, but she throws up a hand, blocking him. He could easily brush her off, but instead, he rocks back, as if he is unwilling to let her hand touch his chest.

She huffs, blowing out her frustration in a puff of mist.

There are a million questions she would like to ask of her husband, but for now one answer must do. She looks through and around soldiers and well wishers, searching for a flash of white—maybe not so purely white, after she has seen the shape the men are in. Jon might refuse to be tended to, while his men are still unsettled, but Ghost might be more willing to receive her petting. She has missed the beast, which warmed her bed before Jon ever did, and besides, Jon sees, hears, feels what Ghost does, when he so chooses, so whatever affection she bestows upon Ghost might do for the both of them until she can get her husband alone.

"Where is…"

Silence meets her unfinished question. Silence and a stare so empty, she need not ask what became of the direwolf to know it in her heart.

…

She works amongst the men until her feet and back ache from the unyielding stone floor and repetitious movement, bending down to greet each man and give them bread and ale with her own two hands. When she can stand no longer, she seeks Jon out. Despite looking dead on his feet, he has been doing much the same over the course of the day, tirelessly moving from one man to the next. She can see the devotion in his men's eyes, when they look up at him from wherever they have slumped on the floor. It's a devotion forged in victory and stained with blood and loss. They seem undisturbed by his silence. They must be accustomed to it.

Begging him to take his rest, she draws him away. Through halls bustling with renew activity and up winding stairs, they make their way to the king's chambers without any words passing between them.

Busywork helps Sansa keep her wits about her in the face of such endless quiet. Having called for hot water and scented oils for a bath, she goes about the room, drawing curtains, prodding the fire, and turning back the furs on the bed, preparing the room for his much needed slumber, while he sits on the edge of one of the wooden, high backed chairs, looking as if he barely knows how to settle into it and would rather sit cross-legged on the floor. Still, there is some sign that he alive to her presence: though he doesn't speak, Sansa can feel the weight of his stare on her, as she moves about the room.

Four of the strongest servants left to them in the Red Keep come into the bedchamber hauling buckets of water. It's hot enough that it steams, when they pour it into the copper tub situated before the fire. These things—fires, hot baths, heaping scoops of gruel, hunks of grainy bread, and cold mugs of ale—are luxuries, but all the returning men deserve them. Sansa gave instructions that nothing was to be spared in celebration of this triumphant day. These four took her instructions to heart, for the water reaches high in the tub, filled so close that it might overflow with Jon inside. Calling over her shoulder, she gives them her thanks and upends the oil they have brought into the water, as the door closes behind them with a thunk.

Still he watches, unmoving, but due to practicality born of economies great and small, Sansa is keenly aware that the bathwater cools, while he sits motionless, and is eager to usher him into it before the effort of the men and fuel that heated the water goes completely to waste. She turns her back and instructs him to strip. She speaks to him matter-of-factly. It's a gentle tone of command that reminds hers of Septa Mordane during their lessons more so than her lady mother when speaking to her lord father, but Sansa's either out of practice in dealing with her husband or she's lost the ability altogether. She can only hope that with time will come familiarity.

"The water will not stay warm for long," she says, trying to drown out the sound of the rustle of clothing and furs falling to the floor.

Though she's watched him strip down until he was as bare as he was born before, she feels shy at the intimacy of the moment. That too must fade with time if they are to be back to who they were before he left.

Water sloshes against the sides of the tub, as he slips into the water; whether it is her authoritarian tone or his own considerable exhaustion that has stripped him of the ability to refuse, he seems obedient enough to her wishes, following her command to its conclusion.

She steels herself to turn back to him, reminding herself that though he is as silent as the grave, he is her husband. Taking a towel for her lap off the nearby table, she kneels down behind him. As dirty as all the men are, at least they are not alive with nits and fleas, the freezing temperatures bestowed upon them one grace, but the water will wash away the grime caked onto him and the heat of the water might help him relax and loosen his muscles and perhaps his tongue as well.

At first she makes no move to touch him, but watches as he dunks his head into the water—long enough to make her nervous, until he comes up for air with a great gasp. Water cascades from his hair, down his back and arms, as he sits up, pushes his hair back, and swipes the water out of his eyes with the back of his hand.

"Shall I wash your hair?"

She needs to have her hands on him, so she can feel connected somehow to this man, who resembles her husband in some ways, but in others seems a stranger to her. Having maneuvered and stretched out as best he could within the small tub, his only answer is to tip his head down in wordless offering.

She pushes up her sleeves and picks up the slice of strong lye soap left by the servants. Dipping it into the water, her arm accidentally brushes his, slick and warm. Their first real touch elicits an audible swallow from Jon. She could do away with the washing portion of this bath, pull at her laces, strip off her smallclothes and stockings, and climb in after him, but he needs a wash as much as they need time, so she sets to work, building a good lather before dropping the soap into his waiting hand. Working her fingers through his curls, she teases apart the tangles and runs the short of her nails over his scalp. He doesn't speak, but she coaxes some satisfied noises from him, while she works. When his hair hangs lank and slick against his skull, she urges him to sit up with the lightest pressure at the base of his neck, so that she might scrub his back. With the water full to the rim, she has to plunge her arm below the water to reach his waist and lower. When the dirt has been scrubbed away and nothing but soapy bubbles dot his skin, she kisses his newly pink shoulder. He murmurs his thanks. It's only two words, but it's something.

He feels right, familiar under her hands. There are new scars that crisscross his pale skin, ones she knows from her much called upon recollections he didn't have before, but the scars she can't see trouble her most.

Handing over the soap, Jon does the rest, washing away dirt and who knows what else, and when he steps out dripping, she sees him wrapped in a towel. He looks some improved, but after he's done wrapping the towel about his waist, he once more perches in the wooden chair, looking no more comfortable in it than he did before the bath.

Except for one difference. She makes to step away, but he grabs her by the hips and pulls her back. Stumbling, she catches herself, grabbing his shoulders, as he buries his head in her middle. The wet of his hair soaks through the wool, but the fierceness of his grip and the sound of her name murmured in that raspy voice is unbearably sweet despite his obvious unease.

"Jon, please talk to me, please," she pleads, stroking his head, smoothing back the wet hanks of hair.

He draws back just enough to rest the crown of his head against her, staring down where their feet hide together beneath her navy skirts.

"There were dragons."

Sansa stiffens. There was no word of this. No hint that the Dragon Queen broke her pledge to leave Westeros behind. Sansa continued to send provisions and aid to those who were sick, the remnants of Daenerys' army. She kept Jon's pledge to see to their care, despite the difficulties of winter and she expected the silver haired woman to do the same, but perhaps it was a mistake to ever trust her.

"Dragons?"

"_Ice_ dragons."

"What?"

"They came from the north like in the old tales Old Nan used to tell." Sansa has no memory of this. She hated the stories that were gruesome and frightening as much as the boys and Arya loved them. "We thought that was the end. I didn't think I could face dragons again." Once was more than enough, Sansa was certain. "But I controlled them."

"You rode dragons?"

She tries to picture Jon, a black splotch high above in the grey, winter sky.

"No, I slipped inside of them, the way I sometimes…"

He inhales, his back expanding with the deepness of it, and she can feel Ghost's presence like a cold nose against her hand, gently insisting upon her attention. There's an ache with the fresh realization she'll never bury her hand in the ruff of his neck again. She lost Lady, but the bond Jon shared with Ghost was something more. If he'd only let her, she could share the burden of his loss. She's beginning to think that Jon is purposefully shutting her out, closing off whatever it is that made him open to her before, when she felt and heard him inside of her head like a soft, reassuring murmur.

Tucking her thumbs under his jaw, she tilts his head up, so that he must look at her. He's in there, swamped by guilt and sadness, smothered by losses that multiplied while she waited in King's Landing. She can just make him out.

He releases his grip on her, sinking back into the chair, his eyes still a grey void, as they dart away from her. "I'm not a man, Sansa. I'm something terrible."

"That's nonsense."

"I'm a monster," he insists, and she can hear his teeth begin to grind together.

"I've never heard of monsters who save people." She turns away, looking for a bowl, determined to do something that might help him shed this memory, this hardened skin that has formed out of necessity. "I won't have you talking nonsense, Jon Snow."

"What are you doing?" he asks flatly, as she gathers her tools: a straight razor, spring scissors, a bowl of water, and some oil to soothe the skin.

"Cleaning you up. You might think yourself a monster, but I won't have you looking like a beast. The bath didn't quite do the trick."

Handing him the razor and the bowl to cradle in his lap, she sets to work on his beard first, clipping it short enough with the scissors before she attacks it with the straight blade. She works slowly, methodically, revealing fresh, unblemished skin bit by bit. Between the scrape of the blade against his skin, he speaks.

"I couldn't save everyone."

"Who else?" Ghost was lost, and although she walked among the men today, tending to their needs and welcoming them home, she refused to count their number or bring herself to ask after anyone who seemed to be absent.

"Asha."

It isn't the answer she wanted, although any familiar name would sting. There had been some comfort in thinking that Asha Greyjoy fought at Jon's side, when Sansa could not. Sansa knew she could trust Asha and that she would do her best to see Jon safe.

"It was at the end. That's the joke of it—how many died so near the end."

Sansa takes the bowl from him and sloshes the razor in the water, removing black hair and oil from its edge.

"I hoped…" she trails off, as she passes him a clean linen towel and deposits the bowl back on the table.

Asha's absence did not go unnoted, but Sansa hoped that Asha had set off for the Iron Islands. What would be the point in her marching south with the rest of them? Greyjoys belong on the water even when the seas are cold enough to freeze.

"Gods, she hated the very thought of that old man, who claimed to be her husband," Jon grits through bared teeth, as he pats at his newly smooth face. "He better be dead."

"Or?"

"Or I'll take everything he claims as his own."

"Jon." She tugs the towel from his grip and drapes it around his shoulders, fixing him with a stony glare. "Don't speak of any more wars."

The pain of war eats away at men, but it works its way into their bones too, becoming a part of them. Jon must learn to live and rule in peace. She must bleed the patterns of war from him like a poison. Maesters have their ways. So do wives.

He's quiet again throughout the rest of it, the only sound in the room the whisper of her slippers over a floor increasingly littered with fallen dark curls.

Throwing the towel that has kept his shoulders free of the unwanted hair aside, she steps back to admire her work.

"There you are. There's my Jon."

His hands flex and grip his bare knees. He suddenly looks so vulnerable. Shorn and shined, the jagged crack in the barrier he's thrown up between them suddenly seems so painfully obvious. It has made his eyes appear so hauntingly empty, but they fix on her now with an intensity that burns.

"Is that who I am?"

Crouching to be on level with him, she covers his twitching hands with her own, stilling them. "Of course. You're my Jon and I'm your Sansa."

He leans towards her, and they're suddenly closer than they've been since he left, but it's more than just physical closeness that simmers between them, as he frees his hands and traces the underside of her jaw until his fingers are buried in the thickness of her hair. For moons she has held back her tears, but Jon's touch loosens the threads of her composure, and she feels them spill hotly over her cheeks.

"I'm not sure anymore."

"I am," she says, blinking back tears. "It's the only thing that has ever made sense to me. So, you must stop with this, you must…"

He cuts off her plea. She's waited for it, but it's still a surprise, when with a tilt of his head his lips press hard against hers, his hands cradling her head, holding her firmly to his mouth. He kisses her again and again—desperate, quick kisses that have no chance to deepen. It's like their first kiss, when the urgency of his passion pushed her up against the wall and made her knees go weak. Her whole body comes to life, every thought focused on the pressure of his lips and his fingers and the contrast of chapped lips and sharp teeth. Blood rushes in her ears and she scrambles against him, trying to draw him closer in this awkward position, trying to slow his movements, so she can open her mouth under his and feel the drag of his tongue in her mouth.

The bite of his teeth, nipping at her lower lip, pulls a sound from the back of her throat that is so raw, her cheeks flush in embarrassment. Nothing has made her wet between her legs except her own thoughts and wandering hands since he road north, and now just his tongue soothing the hurt is enough.

His hand maps her neck, her shoulder. She hates the necessity of her high necked woolen gown that prevents her from feeling his touch as he cups her breasts. Through silk she might get a better sense of his roughened hands.

"Gods, you smell good." He breathes at her neck, his tongue flicking out to dip into the hollow, where simple lace decorates the edging of her gown, as if to taste her too. "I forgot how bloody good you smell."

Like juniper. When word came that the army was close, she called for her own hot bath with a scoop of juniper berries to scent the water. It's a luxury she does not regularly afford herself, but she's glad enough of it now if it pleases him.

She wants to please him other ways as well.

"Take me to bed."

With a huff he slips his hands under her arms and lifts her to her feet. She's seen how tired he is in the slump of his shoulders, his lethargic movements, and the weariness in his face, but some reserve of energy allows him to pick her up, carry her the five paces to the bed, and throw her sideways across its furs before crawling atop her. He wastes no time, dragging her heavy skirts up with him, bunching them up around her waist and yanking at her smallclothes with rushed hands. Their arms battle each other, as she reaches down to tug the towel free of his waist. It no doubt slows his efforts, but she finds she can practice no patience with Jon propped above her.

Though he is finally naked and he has managed to toss her smallclothes aside, he pauses, running his hand over the rise of her hip and staring in a way that should make her shy, but she finds herself widening the gap between her legs, sucking in her breath in anticipation of more than the heat of his stare there.

"I've forgotten more than I remember."

"We'll relearn," she promises him, but even with the length of him rigid against her thigh, he seems distracted, his eyes blurred by thinly concealed emotion.

"I couldn't let myself think of you. Not and keep going. I had to give up hope of seeing you again."

She shushes him gently, her hand settling on his too sharp hip and guiding him towards her until the head of him is where she needs him.

Sometimes the hoping was so very painful, when she wanted to give up. Giving up would have been easier than the promise of sweet things—like making love to her husband—that seemed so impossibly out of reach.

"I hoped for the both of us."

He pushes into her with a hard snap of his hips. It's as painful after all this time as it is pleasurable to feel him thick and deep inside of her. He pants against her cheek and his fingers knot in her hair, twisting painfully, while muttering something that might be an apology even as he begins to thrust and she groans in relief.

He's home. With her. In her.

As it turns out, she's forgotten too. Memories worn threadbare, during dark, lonely nights, don't compare with this overwhelming torrent of sensation. His mouth, tongue, and teeth at her neck, her ear, and lips, swallowing her whimpers, making her skin pebble and the fine hairs on her too thin body stand erect. The soft, springy feel of the hair on his chest under her questing hands. His skin hot and firm, stretched tight over the flexing muscles of his back and arse with every forceful plunge of his body into hers. The wet sounds of their slick meeting and the gasp and grunt of effort and relief.

Too soon he approaches his completion, his pelvis crashing against hers, bone against bone, flesh against flesh, his words broken and deliciously filthy in her ear. _Hot. Wet. Cunt. Gods. Fuck. _It's too soon for her to follow, but she wants it for him and wants it for herself—to feel him spill inside of her. She arches her back with a moan, pushing up her straining breasts trapped in wool that keeps her taut nipples from rubbing against his chest. The heel of her foot inches up his back, attempting to pull him in further and bring him to the point where he can't stop himself from finishing. Rocking against him, she begs for him to come.

He's falling apart, his breathing ragged, thrusts uneven, the line between his brows deep from exhaustion and the demands of his body, when she plants her hands on either side of his smooth face and commands him, "Look at me, Jon."

He does.

He comes with a growl as deep as any direwolf's.

His body goes limp, a satisfying, heavy weight upon her chest and middle, and then his fingers are on her, where they meet, fumbling for only a moment before locating the spot and deftly circling. It's so good to have it be Jon's calloused finger wet with her arousal, to have it be her husband urging her closer and not herself that tight pleasure coils in her belly more quickly than she imagined it could. He must feel it, for he grins wickedly down at her, whispering encouragement. Still hard inside of her, he gives a few shallow thrusts, and the feel of him, moving slick with his release is enough to send her over the edge. With eyes shut tight, she sees a field of stars, pleasure popping like tiny, bright explosions behind her lids, while she gasps for air and digs her fingers into his arse, holding him in place until he's wrung the last bit of bliss from her body.

Her husband, a wolf strong enough to command dragons, is quiet once more, as he rolls off of her and she tugs at the laces of her gown, fighting to be free of it, but his silence isn't quite as disconcerting. He stares up at the ceiling, his mouth relaxed and his eyelids hooded. Sleep will no doubt overcome him soon. But, she believes he will speak more with time, so long as he is also not given too much space. They need to be knit back together, she and him, until they are family once more and not two grasping, desperate strangers.

For all she knows, tonight they have made the child she's hoped for. Her thighs are wet with his seed, as she wiggles free of her unbound gown and pulls her shift over her head with a sigh of relief. Tucking herself into Jon's side, she pillows her head on his chest, giving in to the lull of the rise and fall of his body and the hum of satisfaction in the back of her mind that could be hers but could be Jon's as well.

His arm tightens around her, as she spells out on his chest the words—I love you—with the tip of her finger. Whatever ghosts and doubts and guilt haunt her husband, she knows she will always be well loved. Neither of them can help loving the other. They've tried and failed at that.

She suspects he's not entirely closed off to her in this moment, so as his breathing slows and sleep claims him, she thinks of all the things she's wanted to share with him, speaking to him without words of Gendry and Arya and the hope she clings to that her little sister is out there waiting to be found and returned to them. She thinks of the questions she still wants answered. Whether in the North he heard Bran's voice more clearly echoing through the leaves of weirwood trees or whether anyone speaks of a boy who looks like a Tully but was born bearing the Stark name. She thinks of another babe, dark of hair and grey of eyes. Of Jon holding a child of his own blood. And she promises him that even if it is always just they two, it will be enough, for in him she has found her world.

The End

* * *

><p><strong>Final Notes<strong>: Oh, and if you made it this far and think Jon and Sansa at least deserve to have a family after everything, I suggest you read The Last Two, which prompted AWT. It is essentially the epilogue to this fic.

I am a needy author, when all is said and done. Any hint that this final chapter was worth the epic journey is appreciated.


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